Some of you may know...(because if you'll listen I'll go on and on)...about my discovery of cloth diapers. This isn't something revolutionary...they have been around for well...I'm gonna say centuries, but in this area, today, they are the minority. I won't go into my full rant about cloth diapers and the crazy chemicals (that are banned in Europe and Asia) manufacturers use in disposable but how cloth has opened the world to me.
It started as a health concern for baby-to-be (Adam), reading an article on how a Mom started her cloth diapering business out of necessity because her premature baby couldn't handle the fumes in her incubator...and has led me to a more conscientious lifestyle of trying to waste, use, and leave less.
Cloth wipes seemed like an easy choice/decision once I started using the diapers...duh. But then I started looking around the house and realized there were a couple more places I could substitute cloth for paper/disposable. I've always been one to pick up a dish towel vs. using paper towels...so I have lots of those around. I've seen/heard of a lot of people making a variation of a dish towel (smaller?) to use in place of those. Great thing if the paper towel roll is being changed frequently (an 8 pack last over 6 mths here), but my "ah ha" moment is exceedingly more simple. Cloth napkins...they might seem "fancy" but really they aren't a big deal. I made my from some cotton and currently just have 12...someday I'll make more but for now it works w/ me being the only person to use them. I've seen them at thrift stores...nice cloth naps for very cheap as well as the dollar stores. The boys have their own version but they are more like washcloths to wipe hands/faces at the end of meals. There are lots of areas in the kitchen where paper usage can be cut...paper plates, plastic cups, etc. Personally...if you are using these daily there is a laziness issue...
[Some people ask me about my water usage...how it counter acts the savings of cloth. Personally this isn't very logical to me...diapers take 500 years to decompose in a landfill (per treehugger.com)...and the average child uses 7,349 diapers until they potty train....sooo I guess I don't feel as guilty using a few extra gallons of water every 3-4 days. Towels and cloth napkins are all done together once or twice a week...what I would do anyway.]
So once I saw how incredibly easy it was for me to make these little switches I began thinking more about everything. How before I never would of given a second thought to throwing away piles of paper napkins or like with Aiden...using the bags full of disp. diapers. The process of starting cloth diapers seemed to open my eyes to how wasteful American's have become. It seems like we are living in a crazy world where ignorance is bliss and we don't need to think beyond "Burger King" or "McDonalds" most days (those fry cartons are recyclable!). We are sooo lucky to be living as Americans, we live far better than most humans...and most of the time we take it for granted. We're very arrogant in the fact we can just toss aside billions of waste and call it convenience. Our lifestyle is one of overindulgence but my entire goal of writing this is to encourage all of us to just think a little bit more about what we do, use, or save. I encourage Moms (the leaders of the packs!) to involve your children and families in an effort to raise kids aware of waste (trash, energy, water). Aiden loves to point out what is recyclable now and when he's done w/ a box of crackers he gets excited to tear it down and put it in the recycling.
I know it isn't much but between all the cloth and recycling our current household of 3 is down to one less than full bag of trash per WEEK (the avg. per person is 13.38 pounds). Imagine if we were all just producing 1 bag per 3 people...per week! I have to say I laugh at a lot of "green" initiatives...where politicians get involved and deals are made, people are suppose to fight for our environment through consumerism, etc. I am in no way considering myself an "environmentalist" I like to consider myself just someone more aware of my surroundings and wastefulness. We are poor candidates for the term "environmentalist" because of the full sized gas guzzling vehicles we own, but one step at a time...
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