I recently had the opportunity to sit in on a conference call with Dave Lettero from Bonneville Environmental Foundation, otherwise known as BEF. During the conference call I learned a lot about renewable energy while he touched on small things that we can do every day to help shrink our carbon footprint.

He talked about fun activities that you can do at home, as a family, such as building a solar oven, a solar cell and a solar car. He shared with us how to bake cookies in the solar over and melt broken crayons to make a new larger crayon in the solar oven. BEF was kind enough to send us a Solar Car Kit to make ourselves. This was such an awesome bonding and learning experience for my 4 year old. The car took us nearly 30 minutes to put together, and each step of the way Ryan had a ton of questions. I have a little footage here:

Ryan was amazed at the cars ability to run while in the sunlight and what made it even better was that he built this car himself (with my help). It was awesome to see how proud he was. He has since attached various figurines to take a little ride on the solar car.

Here is a little about BEF from their website at b-e-f.org:

You can find much more information on their website such as using their carbon calculator to find out how big or small your carbon footprint is. There is an education area that is fun to explore with your children. You can find much more where this all came from, head to their website and look around!