To support their health, we've created a pristine environment, eliminating as many indoor and outdoor toxins as possible. We've built every structure green, with completely nontoxic materials and paints. The food we serve — most of which we grow in greenhouses on the ranch — is organic and vegan. We use only Imus GTC (Greening the Cleaning) products, made from readily biodegradable, naturally derived materials free of all known or suspected carcinogenic substances. We never allow pesticides or synthetic chemicals of any kind in our gardening, farming, infrastructure or plant maintenance.

As always, common sense motivated every single one of these decisions. If you have any choice in the matter, why would you expose children — especially children with cancer, whose immune systems are already compromised — to contaminants that might further damage their health? Why would you spray soccer fields and lawns with pesticides that impair brain functioning and have proven links to serious learning disabilities? Why feed kids junk food — processed white bread, potato chips, candy — that provides no nourishment? Just because it's easier, cheaper? Grown-ups would never accept that kind of treatment — why should our kids settle for it? Especially these kids. They've already overcome so many obstacles at such an early age — more than most people endure in a lifetime. Shouldn't we be making every effort to protect them?

Excerpted from GREEN THIS! Volume I by Deirdre Imus. © 2007 by Dierdre Imus. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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