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.

"We think of ourselves as five citizens who are part of a family. And part of a larger group, a community," said Natalia Volz.

"I don't think I'm an eco model for anything, I'm just a person trying to get better," Sarah Sultzer said.

For Murray, it was a question of fairness rather than the mom factor. "Why should we Americans be able to consume so many more resources per person than other people on the planet?"

And they have looked not just at their households, but at national policies. When Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton recently supported a gasoline-tax reduction, critical e-mails "were going back and forth in our group like crazy," Murray said. "Our energy policy should be about the long term."

When she started the group, Murray was thinking about her sister, who has lived in Europe for a decade. She has four children, a tiny refrigerator, a washing machine tucked under the kitchen sink, and no car. "Yet her standard of living is fantastic."

Murray's own family spent a work-related month in Switzerland last summer. Again, she was struck by how you could have a good life and not use as many resources.

She decided to make some changes. She figured friends could help.

It turned out that Murray called her cohorts pretty much just as they were having their own thoughts - about transportation, recycling, cleaning chemicals.

One is a registered nurse; the rest have part-time jobs or have suspended their careers as they raise their families. Among them, they have 17 children.

They come to the meetings with their calculators, appliance manuals, and the notebooks Murray gave them, printed with green footprints and the phrase, "Less is More."

Murray teaches business communications at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and she runs things with precision, posting the schedule on a flip chart.

9:30 Review research

9:45 Next action step

10:00 Review consumption charts and light bulbs

By 10:20 one recent day, they were constructing a matrix analysis of things they had tried - and logged on tracking sheets - over the last six months, comparing difficulty to impact.

Using less detergent and canceling the double rinse on the washer were easy and made a difference. Likewise, getting their children to wear their jeans twice.

Hanging wash on a line made a difference but was inconvenient. "I had six loads yesterday," said Beth Resweber, who has four children. "I doubled my laundry time."

Installing new insulation was expensive but had a high impact in energy savings.

Not flushing the toilet every time might have an impact, but no one was willing.

As for the showers, timed with borrowed swim-team stopwatches, the women themselves turned out to be the water hogs.

"Our husbands and kids are taking two- to three-minute showers," Murray said. "We're taking 11- to 12-minute showers."

One of Stacy Clements' sons clocked in at 58 seconds. "And I was like, OK, was any soap involved?"

Their husbands have watched with interest, perhaps even awe. "We've had a lot of changes in the house - positive," J.W. Clements said.

The children became the reality check for how low the thermostats could go in winter - 65.

At Murray's house, "the rule was you could tell me you were cold only if you had on socks and a sweatshirt."

"They get it, why I'm doing it," she said, but added, "They also think I go overboard."

While all their spreadsheets show progress, the women nevertheless worry that their efforts are picayune, given the giant shifts in technology and society that experts say are needed to combat global warming.

But then it comes back to the power of moms.

As their kids begin to understand why their mother isn't, say, buying plastic bags for their sandwiches anymore, "it is bringing an awareness to the new generation," Volz said.

"I think they'll then really lead the way."