1. Buy loose tea in bulk.
2. Actually get around to making everybody handkerchiefs, not just Jacob.
3. Remember to bring own jars to co-op for bulk bin items so I don’t need a bag.
4. Remember to stop librarian from printing out list of books taken out ( this tends to run somewhere around 30 when all three kids go with me.)
5. Take advantage of Netflix’s Instant Movie selection; lots of good stuff here. ( You can now stream Netflix movies straight to your TV– but there’s a $100 initial cost for the box. Too rich for my blood.)
6. Way back in the day, I stocked up on shampoo, conditioner and bars of Dove Soap for dirt cheap. I am finally reaching the end of that supply, and instead of buying individual products again, I’ll get a gallon jug of Dr.Bronner’s All-One and divvy it into smaller containers. I had thought my next bottle of Bronner would be eucalyptus, but I see they now offer citrus. Hmmm. That’s a tough one.
7. After sponge supply ends, switch to dishcloths.
8. Encourage Cassie to paint hundreds of pictures per day on her wall chalkboard, rather than scrap or recycled paper or (horrors) her 0% post-consumer content construction paper.

Help! I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here! Any more ideas?

Continuing on with ways to Reduce:

One of my biggest regrets, environmentally speaking, is that I used disposable diapers. For three children. Why? To be perfectly honest, I never even thought about it. I was 21 when I had my first, frightened out of my mind by the idea that the hospital was going to release a child, a vulnerable newborn, into my completely inexperienced care.

I received diapers and wipes at my baby shower, along with a Diaper Genie. Pampers sent me coupons. Luvs sent me coupons. Huggies sent me coupons. The hospital sent me home with a starter stash.

A fine example of marketing well-done: It genuinely never occurred to me not to go on using disposables. It was just what people did. That’s what they had at the grocery store. Cloth diapering was a relic of my parents’ generation, something they did because they had to, but me- why, I was lucky enough to live in a time where disposable convenience was king.

Well, things have changed. A green movement has begun, and mothers are leading the march. New parents are considering the impact of all those diapers: little plastic-covered vessels of human waste, billions of them, sealed up tight, sitting in our landfills.

Disposable diapers make up five percent of landfill waste in the United States.

It can take up to five hundred years for a standard gel-filled disposable to decompose.

The EPA estimates that about eighteen billion disposable diapers were discard in America last year.

The average American baby will go through five thousand diapers before graduating to the porcelain bowl, so your choice matters. And there are a lot of choices out there.

-Lynda Fassa
Green Babies, Sage Moms

And there are a lot of choices, beyond those white cloth squares of my childhood (and their cute ducky pins), that lived a second life in my home as rags and dustcloths.

I was surprised by the array of choices. There is your standard cloth diaper. There are “hybrid” diapers where the cover is reusable and the insert is biodegradable (gDiaper). There are “greener” disposables, which still go into landfills but are chemical free (Tushies, Seventh Generation). There is the diaper free movement, where the parents learn the schedule and “tells” of their baby, a technique used in many other regions of the world.

If I had to guess, I would say that most new parents reach for the disposable diaper automatically, just like we did, because it is such a conditioned cultural response. People simply do not know enough about the alternatives.

Or, perhaps, they don’t know any other parents who use them, and don’t have the confidence as a new parent to buck the norm. Maybe they don’t want to be singled out as the hippie mom. Maybe they worry that the alternatives will make their life harder, and, let’s face it, life with a new baby is hard enough.

So the obvious solution is for those who are living the alternative to speak up! Tell everyone around you your choice, why you made it, and how you live it! Share your stories and your expertise. Help a new mom make a choice with confidence and knowledge, that will empower her with the knowledge that she is doing her part to leave her child a better planet. Get the word out there and let it be known that there are choices, possibly unconventional, but viable and satisfying.

To that end, I asked my friend Kristin, a new mom, to share her experiences with her (very cute) baby boy and their alternative diaper of choice, the gDiaper:

Guest post by Kristin:

Why gDiapers are gTastic!

I started researching baby stuff before I even got pregnant (yes, I am that person), I knew that it took disposable diapers a long time to decompose, but when I found out that it takes about 500 YEARS and you can go through thousands until your child is potty trained – I knew there had to be something better out there.

I did a random Google search one day for biodegradable diapers – just to see if they existed. Turns out, they do. They are called gDiapers and they are great (and so is their website!) . The gDiaper is a flushable, biodegradable diaper – and you can even compost the wet ones! As soon as I saw this – I knew they were meant for us.

Now, I have been using gDiapers for 3 ½ months, so I am pretty much an expert on this topic. gDiapers have a outer cloth cover (called the “little g” pant), just like regular cloth diapers. Inside there is a plastic snap-in liner and into that you put the flushable diaper refill. Both the cloth cover and snap-in liner are washer and dryer-able. When it’s time to change your baby, you just take out the diaper refill, go to the toilet, tear it down one side, drop it into the toilet, break it up with the swisher stick (it comes with the starter kit) and flush. Have a well or just don’t want to overwork your toilet? Well, you can toss the refills in the trash and they biodegrade in 50 to150 days (NOT years!) Also, they can be tossed in your compost bin or pile, but only the
wet ones.

When our little Michael Lee came home from the hospital (all 6lbs 6 oz of him) he was wearing the diapers the hospital gave us. We decided to use them up because he seemed too small for the gDiapers. After being home all of 3 days we had filled 2 trash cans with diapers and were feeling very guilty about it (we are a one trash bag a week family). We decided to just try the gDiapers and just see how they fit. Now, I am not going to lie, we had some leaks. Maybe because he was a little small, and maybe because of the new baby boy learning curve – but we eventually got it down and they rarely leak now, plus we can change his g-Diaper just as quick as anyone with a disposable, even with an extra step thrown in. You can even use these as cloth diapers – just put the cloth insert instead of the flushable refill and bam! Cloth diaper!

We have had our families and friends all change him and everyone is fascinated by them & amazed at how good they work. They are absorbent, they are made of a breathable material that cuts down on diaper rashes (we have only had one rash, and that was while he was in the hospital, wearing disposables) and they come in lots of colors, so they are extra cute. And as for cost – the cloth covers cost a bit ($16.99) and each come with 2 liners. You only need about 8 of each size & there are 3 sizes. The diaper refills are not too bad price wise either – a case of 128 med/large refills are $52 – and that’s online. We also get them at Wegmans and I think they are about $11 a pack. They are not super widely available in many stores – but some Whole Foods also carry them. It’s worth paying a little extra and knowing you aren’t doing major harm to the environment. Plus, the cloth covers and snap-in liners can be used for a second (or third) child – so you can save money there!

Honestly, we would never use disposable diapers. We plan on using these for Michael Lee and any other child that will come along. Every little bit helps!

Further reading:
Green Babies, Sage Moms: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Your Organic Baby by Lynda Fassa

Fassa also discusses diaper options online at Planet Green:
Solve the Diaper Dilemma

To learn more about going diaper free: DiaperFreeBaby.org

For organic training pants (look like big kid underwear but unsnap in case of emergency), check out Little Beetle Learners.

In a highly informal poll of a very small sample of Delaware Moms, I found that 85% of mothers who have kids currently in diapers use disposables. (I did not count chemical-free disposables separately, since they still go to landfills, but maybe I should have for the sake of clarification.) That translates into one in six using an alternative option.

Are you one of those six? Will you share your experience?

Final thought: Do you think that the state of the economy will encourage new parents to embrace frugal diapering choices, hastening their return to the mainstream?

When I was in high school, I had a theory: Girls travel in packs of three. The pretty one, the smart one, and the fun one.

I think I can apply this to the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) as well.

Recycling gets all the action. People get behind it because it’s dynamic and concrete. It gets its image printed on Tshirts. It’s the face of the green movement, the spokesperson, leader of the pack. It’s the pretty one.

Reusing requires a bit of creative thinking. People love to see what crazy ideas others have come up with. LP as snack tray? Cool! Homes made from shipping containers? Super awesome! Ottomans from old washing machine drums? Dang, wish I’d thought of that when my mother-in-law had an washing machine drum sitting in her garage! Reusing (and its twin, repurposing) is definitely the fun one.

Which leaves us with poor old Reduce, less popular but smart as a whip. There would be less need to reuse, repurpose and recycle if we didn’t buy the stuff in the first place. Recycling is great, don’t get me wrong, keep doing it! but ultimately it still uses a lot of energy and causes its share of pollution. And while reusing and repurposing extends the life of an item, its final destination is still going to be the landfill.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I am in the throes of a massive declutter, trying to free up some space so I can breathe, and just getting rid of stuff so I don’t have to organize it or clean it or shuffle it around anymore. Right on the heels of that decision came the realization that all this work will be for naught, if I keep letting new stuff in the house.

Right around then I came across Crunchy Chicken’s Buy Nothing Challenge. I wasn’t the little joiner yet that I’ve become (in the last two weeks or so; what’s happened to me?) so I didn’t officially sign on, but in my mind I made the commitment. Aside from food, gasoline and bills, I have not bought a single thing in three weeks. Nothing. However, in the next month I have a flurry of wedding activity, which requires gifts and clothing, and I don’t think I’ll be able to sustain the buying of nothing. (More on my attempts to keep it green and simple during wedding season later this week.)

So the new challenge: What other ways can I reduce?

The most obvious place to start is my carbon footprint. By my calculations online, our family’s footprint is lesser than that of your Average American, but surely we can do better than that. (See how I said that without any sarcastic comments on the Average American being a wasteful, lazy, inconsiderate slob? How nice I’ve become!) So I’ve been doing some thinking and clicking around, and here’s what I’ve come up with:

• I joined the Gift of Green’s Clothesline Challenge. I’m shooting for 100% line-dry for the duration of the challenge (May, June, July). That’s completely doable during the summer, since I can easily offset rainy days by doubling up on bright sunny days. Also, during the summer the clothes are smaller! So less loads overall.
• I also signed on for Farm to Philly’s One Local Summer challenge. This one requires me to make one meal a week using only locally grown ingredients from June 1st through August 31st. This one is also completely doable; I can just make our Sunday dinner from whatever I buy at the co-op farmer’s market that morning. I couldn’t make the button functional on the sidebar, but here’s the image:

• I’ll conserve more energy by using my laptop rather than the desktop whenever I can.
• Cassie’s last day of school is tomorrow, so I won’t need to drive quite as much. I’m going to attempt to give the car a rest four days out of the week.

What else?

• Sometimes I will take the paper bags at the grocery store, just to have something to put the recycling into and make it more convenient to drop off at the recycling center. That’s just me being a bum. From now on it’s my fabric bags only, and I’ll put my recycling into a big Rubbermaid tub and transport it that way.
• I’ll put out containers to catch rain, to water the vegetable garden. I’ve been meaning to do that anyway, I hate dragging out and putting back the hose.
• I’ll learn how to save all the good recipes in one place on my computer instead of printing them out and putting them in the binder. I’ve already “discovered” the wonders of del.icio.us (long after everyone else in the world, nobody tells me anything) so I don’t need to print out articles anymore.
• I’ll do more shopping from the bulk bins to cut down on packaging.
• I’ll remember to bring my mug to the Y for my coffee, rather than use the Styrofoam cups (I always feel super-hypocritical doing it! But I do forgo the stirrer!)
• My magazine subscriptions all lapse next month, and I’m not going to renew them; many of the articles are online, all of the parenting magazines are available to read at the Y while I work out, and everything else I can get from the library.
• One thing that I will buy: a battery charger and a bunch of rechargeable AA and AAAs. The end of the school year means Wii privileges are restored, and those remotes go through a lot of batteries.

Help a lady out! What am I overlooking? What other ways are there to reduce?

What do you do?