Welcome to magazine – your one-stop resource for practical advice, inspiration and ideas for families and individuals who lean green. We cut through the confusion and clutter to bring you a broad range of earth-friendly alternatives that encourage you to live well and make a difference. You can be sure if you read it in green*light it’s a choice you can live with.

Teach your children to respect Mother Nature by packing environmental awareness into their lunches. Use lunch boxes or cloth sacks, reusable containers and thermoses instead of disposable bags and drink boxes. Stock their lunches with organic foods that are also yummy. Yogurt smoothies with bananas and berries are a tasty way to feed kids their necessary calcium and potassium.

Organic cherry tomatoes are packed with vitamins and sweet enough to replace candy. Yes, we know that you can only push the finicky, little eaters so far – we'll leave that magic line to you . 

Kids Organics offers more ideas for organic munchies. Laptop Lunches sells lunch kits with colorful food containers, utensils, and a recipe book.

Check out these sites for more healthy lunch ideas from your local grocer: Safeway: Family Health, Publix: Keeping Kids Healthy, Food Lion: News You Can Use, A&P: Consumer Updates.

• Sort through last year's supplies and reuse what you can. Fix torn binder spines with duct tape –colored duct tape gives it a fashionable look. Tear out used pages of spiral notebooks and use the remaining blank pages.
• Make a list of supplies you need to prevent impulse purchases.
• Visit thrift shops or children resale shops for lightly used clothing. Second-hand clothing doesn't consume raw materials and energy like new products do.
• Make buying post-consumer recycled or sustainably made products too cool for school. Some fun options include: backpacks made from recycled soda bottles or hemp, binders made from recycled car tires, and pencils made from blue jeans.
• Choose non-toxic products, such as soy-based crayons, water-based paints and vegetable based inks. Avoid glittery or scented pens which have toxic ingredients.
• Pick an earth-friendly mode of transportation for your child: public transportation, carpools, biking or walking.

Has the prospect of a sweat-soaked business suit prevented you from biking to work? With an electric bike, you can motor to work while breathing in the fresh morning air. Pedal back home on your own volition for a daily workout. Say goodbye to gym fees, parking costs, and traffic snarls.

Already popular in Asia , Americans are beginning to discover the benefits and fun of E-bikes. Electric-Bikes.com provides an overview of E-bikes on the market, everything from scintillating sport frames to kick-back cruisers.

When shopping for an E-bike, look at battery range and recharge time, battery weight and type (NiMH are lighter and long-lasting), motor power and type, and maximum speed. There are also electric conversion kits for regular bikes.

Some of our favorites: Tidal Force, Currie Bikes and Scooters, and Prima – Italiana for “E-Bike".

Be a trend-setter. Use eco-friendly materials in your home remodeling project. 3Form makes eco-resin panels with interlays of sustainable, artisan-harvested materials, for example, wall panels with a thatch interlay that deliver stylish luminescence to a Manhattan abode. The socially responsible natural materials include Capiz shells collected along the tsunami-devastated shores of Indonesia.

The resin consists of 40% recycled materials and can be shaped into partitions, doors, columns and furniture as displayed in 3Form's portfolio.

Counter Production in Berkeley and Ice Stone in Brooklyn use recycled glass to make counter tops and table tops. They're stunning, one-of-a-kind surfaces that are easy to clean. Choose a local manufacturer, if possible, since it will use a lot of air-polluting diesel to lug these slabs to their destination.