I have been trying to make some efforts to be more environmentally conscious. I'm having some success but not much. Here's what's working and what's not:
1) "Green grocery bags"-I bought 2 of them and had used them about 3 times each when one of the seams on one of the bags started to rip. I will need to sew it up for it to really be usable again.
1b) I often forget to take the green grocery bags to the store with me.
2) I drive a 6 cylinder SUV. Yes, I know it's a gas guzzler and the gas prices are awful. And if I lived in southern California my vehicle would probably have been torched by environmental terrorists by now. However as much as I'd like to drive a more fuel efficient vehicle, I don't think it's possible. We simply need a large vehicle because we have a very large German Shepherd dog (she's over 90 pounds of pure muscle, energy, and not too much as far as brains go...). And Tom and I both love the breed so I know we'll always have one. And, most importantly, I firmly believe that Andrina is safer in a larger vehicle as opposed to a compact car. And finally, being very short, I really like being higher up off the ground when I drive. It's like living a fairy tale where I can be like everyone else, as opposed to when I can't reach things on the top shelf at the grocery store and I have to climb up the shelves to reach it because I won't ask anyone for help!
2b) How about if Mercedes finally comes up with a fuel-efficient SUV? That would solve so many problems and I'd love it too!
3) Disposable diapers. When I was pregnant I wanted to use disposable diapers because I have so many memories of my own mother and her day to day life with cloth diapers. Using cloth diapers for my mom consisted of: dunking poo-poo filled diapers in the toilet to get the poop off, then rising them in scalding hot water, then soaking them in hot water with bleach, then finally washing them in hot water with bleach in the washing machine. Whew! I get tired and sick to my stomach remembering of all that. But I did have a little bit of environmental guilt over it. However, I read in a baby magazine (while still pregnant) that there is no winner as far as the environment is concerned when choosing how to diaper your baby. Yes, disposable diapers take up room in landfills. But, using cloth diapers uses up much more energy to heat up the water for washing them in hot water. Then to really kill the bacteria, you have to bleach them and of course bleach is not good for the environment (mainly ground water supply) anyways. So until baby is potty-trained, you are hurting the environment either way by simply having a baby, unless you don't use diapers at all and let them poo and pee wherever and whenever. Which is simply disgusting and a health hazard, no way I would ever do that!
4) Recycling. I am very good at recycling. We recycle all of our junk mail except for credit card offers. Those have to be completely destroyed for identity-theft prevention, all of our newspapers and magazines, and all plastics, glass, steel cans, and aluminum cans, even used aluminium foil gets recycled!
5) Trees. We have several trees on our property and we have only planted more since we moved here over six years ago. Also, I plan to add more trees to our back and front yards this fall. I also need to plant some rose bushes and some flowers bushes and flowers to replace some that died over our extremely cold winter this year. I plan to do that this fall too.
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2 comments:
It seems whatever we do there is always some where to improve. So good for you for making some good choices so far! :) and for being at peace w/ other choices.
I too read (after anne was like 18 months) that cloth and disposable are equal. like you said, disposable because they fill up landfills, but what i read about cloth is that they use too much water. not necessarily the heat you use to wash them. also, i would venture to guess that almost no one who uses cloth diapers uses bleach. most of the diapers explicitly say no bleach. in addition bleach breaks them down and since some cloth are so expensive, bleach is a bad idea. or some moms are using cloth to keep their babies away from chemicals so they avoid bleach anyway. bottom line, no one really uses bleach for cloth diapers. you can just wash them a few extra times to get them really clean, use vinegar in the rinse cycle which also kills germs or dry them in a dryer, which is said to heat up high enough to kills the germs you need to kill.
Ok, that's it!
Yeah, so it's a no win either way with diapers. If using cloth you have to kill all the bacteria and you're right, most of the current generation of moms do not use bleach, but they do have to use even more water to get them clean by washing them more than once. Although I don't know if I'd be comfortable not bleaching them and only using vinegar in the rinse if using cloth diapers... Which is a mute point anyways since I'm happy and guilt-free using disposable diapers. And since Andrina has only had diaper rash a few times in her life so far, and I always get it to clear up within a day when it does strike, I know my decision is a good one for her too.
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