At Zerofootprint, we believe that the first step in addressing the environmental challenges that face the world is understanding them.

We all know how to calculate the cost of the things we do and buy in dollars and cents. But we’re just beginning to learn to consider the significant cost to the environment. We can calculate this cost in climate-changing carbon emissions and natural resource depletion, and when we do so we begin to understand our responsibility. If we don’t live sustainably, we’re living on borrowed time.

That time belong to our kids. To help them understand the world they live in, and the way they live in it, we have created the Zerofootprint KidsCalculator, a revolutionary new way to help kids see not only how they affect the environment, but how they can work together to develop communities and lifestyles that don’t make unsustainable demands on the planet.

The KidsCalculator helps children figure out the cost of the things they do every day. First the software asks questions like:

• “How did you get to school today?” • “What did you have for lunch?” • “Do your parents recycle or compost?”

The child’s answers will add up to a calculation of the family’s “footprint” – the mark it leaves on the earth. This allows kids to figure out whether their families are living sustainably, and it directs them towards the greenest, smartest options.

First launched at the Kitchener-Waterloo Children’s Museum, and available on the web at www.zerofootprintkids.com, our interactive calculator is a free educational tool, offered to teachers, organizations, and families who want to teach their kids that the choices we all make are important not only today, but for many years down the road, and not only for us, but for people and ecosystems around the world.

The KidsCalculator is adaptable to any context, and any initiative. Most recently, we have been working with radio station WGBH to develop a program called “Meet the Greens,” which deploys a family of environmentally-conscious cartoons to work its way through the calculations. Check it out at http://www.meetthegreens.org/features/carbon-calculator.html.

The world is changing, and we believe that the next generation needs all the help we can offer to do more than just react to it—today’s kids will soon be rolling up their sleeves to make the world a better place. What makes the KidsCalculator revolutionary is that it helps them start right now, by linking them to others to develop an ever-growing inventory of knowledge. Tips and information can be added to our database, as can questions. Kids can communicate with other kids in the online forum, and teachers can use the program in the classroom, as it has been designed to be fully integrated with the school curriculum. The software is updated regularly, and the latest version includes a blog that allows educators and parents to communicate with each other (and with us!) about the information in the calculator, and how best to share it with kids.

Finally, the calculator can measure anyone’s footprint, anywhere in the world. The challenges we face are global, and the next generation will need to learn that the solutions will have to be global as well.

Kids love to learn, and they want to do the right thing. For years now, children have helped their parents quit smoking, and they could never have helped their moms and dads if they hadn’t first learned that cigarettes are harmful. Let’s help them understand that everything we do – even things that seem as normal to us as smoking in the family car seemed a generation ago – has an environmental consequence.

It’s going to be their world one day. Let’s do everything we can to help them make the most of it.