A 360-degree change
For Mugdha Joshi, validation of her efforts to inculcate love and respect for nature in her son Kabir came when she wasn't around to nudge him towards making a sustainable choice. "He had a cold, and reliant as we are on tissues, his preschool teacher offered him one. With all the articulation of a three-year-old, he told her, 'No tissue. Trees cut'. For him, using cloth napkins is what's normal," says the Bandra-based lactation consultant. But to define this normal has been a long-drawn process, starting with Joshi, 33, changing her own lifestyle — from using bamboo toothbrushes, switching to shampoo bars, not ordering groceries and food online to always carrying cloth bags and steel dabbas for shopping.

For her son, however, the trajectory was somewhat different. "Kabir is only three, but I have already changed three schools because the education he receives cannot be at loggerheads with the value system I want to raise him with. So, if I give him a steel dabba; he shouldn't be surrounded by fancy plastic lunchboxes with cartoon characters," she shares, adding that she plans to enrol him in a school in Andheri affiliated to the Waldorf education system which has an environment-sensitive curriculum, even if that means extra commute. The Joshis recently celebrated Kabir's third birthday at Maharashtra Nature Park in Mahim. "We suggested that the kids bring their own cutlery, while we served them homemade food in steel plates lined with banana leaves. We requested all parents to not send any gifts, and urged them instead to make a donation to an organisation that does beach clean-ups in Dadar, if at all," she says.