It actually is easy being green, or at least turning your family a less toxic shade of brown.

Without breaking much of a sweat, Seattle parents can take obvious and overlooked steps to shrink their carbon footprints by buying less bottled water and more local seasonal vegetables, or just scheduling more playdates in the neighborhood.

Today, green parenting doesn't mean moving into a yurt and living off a compost pile. It does mean doing something, because parents are arguably the most powerful environmental force.

"The most important people are people who care about the future. The people who care about the future are parents," said Dr. Roger Rosenblatt, a professor of family medicine and public health at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

The problem is that today's parent also is one of the most harried peoplre, potentially easily discouraged or frozen by the gloom and doom of melting ice caps, dying salmon and rising oceans.

"You have to give people a sense of hope," Rosenblatt said. "If you create a sense of despair, then no one does anything."

The key is to start small.

"You don't have to turn your life upside down to make a difference," said Katharine Wroth, who oversaw a series on green parenting at the popular and witty environmental Web site, Grist. "I think small steps make a difference."

The ultimate irony about green parenting is that it also may hold an antidote for one of modern parenting's ills: getting overscheduled and overstressed families to slow down because a simpler life is often a slower life.

"I think one of the answers is we are going to have to get a little less hectic," said Mike O'Brien, regional chair of the Sierra Club. "They're really just going back to 'Leave It to Beaver' times, a simpler lifestyle."

The easiest way to add green to your family also is simple: Stop doing a few things.

The bottled water industry, for example, guzzles petroleum. Creating the plastic for those bottles burns roughly 1.5 million barrels of oil a year, and nearly 90 percent of the bottles aren't recycled, according to one estimate.

But the no-bottle theory spills well beyond water. Families can stop buying household cleaning containers by mixing their own cleaning supplies, for example. It doesn't take much. Combine vinegar with water and maybe a little lemon.

Of course, there are obvious steps already drilled into, though not always followed by, Seattle parents. Drive less. Buy less, buy local, buy used. Bring your own bags to grocery stores. Wash all of your clothes in cold water. Lower your thermostat. Buy energy-efficient washers and dryers. Insulate your house properly.

And there are less obvious moves. At your child's next birthday, give her a pass to a climbing gym or laser tag instead of yet another plastic toy, O'Brien said. Take your kids outside. If they appreciate the outdoors they are more likely to protect it.

The list goes on and on, but you shouldn't.

"Do not try to change every aspect of your life all at once," said Miah Arnold, who co-anchors the Houston-based Green Parenting blog. "Rather, change one or two areas at a time."

Parents have the best reason to pick up their pace on environmental protection. They don't have to read any books or watch Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." They just have to look around the dinner table at their kids.

Apparently they are looking because environmental concerns are creeping into mainstream Seattle parenting groups.

"I have been to PTA meetings and moms' group meetings and this is the No. 1 thing they are talking about," said Kathleen Ridihalgh, who writes the P-I sponsored blog Green Parenting: Planet-wise Child Rearing.

Seattle parents are luckier than most because they live in a relatively green culture, with their city, county and state taking major steps, and the Pacific Northwest leading the nation in many environmental initiatives, according to the UW's Rosenblatt."I think the families in this city are beginning to take the first step," Rosenblatt said.

OK, now stop worrying about those orcas, polar bears and shrinking glaciers.

"Make it pleasurable, a part of your life that makes you proud of yourself, that you look forward to undertaking, And take it at your own pace," said Green Parenting's Arnold.

Luckily, the Internet is littered with helpful and practical Web sites, such as Grist, which boasts tips on everything from making your own cleaning supplies to toxic plastics.

"You can't freak out too much, and you can't be perfect in every area," Grist senior editor Wroth suggested.

In my house, we have taken a few of those smaller steps, kicking our bottled water habit, lowering the thermostat to 65 degrees in the day and 62 degrees at night, washing all my clothes in cold water and shopping at PCC. Yet we still own a gas-guzzling VW Passat wagon and a Toyota minivan and simply consume a lot of stuff.

Rosenblatt gives us a C-plus, but we are heading up the curve.

"Don't try to be a purist," he said. "You'll burn out."