Sure enough, in the seven months that five Swarthmore mothers have been greening their lives, their bills - logged on spreadsheets - have told the tale of their success: Electric use down 15 percent, and water down 27.5 percent.

So far the kids have balked at only one thing: soy in the sloppy joes.

These days, motherhood is tinged with green.

Eco moms are on a mission. And, networkers that women are, they are doing it in groups.

"Our grandmothers had quilting bees. My mother had bridge. I've been in book groups," said Beth Murray, who initiated the Swarthmore group. "It may be that this is the next thing women get together to do."

On the West Coast, Kimberly Danek Pinkson started an online venture, the EcoMom Alliance, in 2006, feeling a bit like a voice in the wilderness.

The alliance now has 11,000 members and more than 120 "EcoMom community leaders" who get basic training and a 40-page manual and head out to hold an EcoMom party.

Or change the world, however slightly, such as the 16 women who marched to their local grocery and persuaded the owner to stock more organic food.

"Moms buck up and do what needs to be done," Pinkson said. "Our planet needs that now. Our children need it."

Back East, Nancy Massotto, of Essex County, N.J., formed the Holistic Moms Network five years ago. It now claims 130 chapters across the United States.

They are into things like extended breast-feeding, sure, but also green living.

The Lower Bucks Chapter debuted in October with a program about the importance of eating local foods to save energy. Last month, a speaker extolled the virtues of using solar power in homes.

Certainly environmentalism cuts across the sexes, but these mothers say they have a unique perspective.

"We set up the environment of our homes and kind of chart that course," said Janine Ruth of Bristol Borough, founder of the Lower Bucks chapter. "I don't think it's a mistake that it's called Mother Earth."

Massotto says she thinks it has to do with how a mother protects her children. It begins when she's pregnant and, say, avoids eating fish because of mercury contamination. That "starts this awareness. It sort of snowballs."

Sociologist Riley Dunlap, an Oklahoma State University expert on environmental attitudes, said studies have shown women are more likely than men to support environmental causes. "If anything, those trends have strengthened," he said.

What's interesting to him is that in the 1980s, the environmental activists were blue-collar women fighting local battles, like Lois Gibbs with Love Canal.

Now, Riley said, it appears to be "an upper-middle-class phenomenon. The yuppie mom. The soccer mom."

Actually, the "eco mom" label unsettles the Swarthmore women.