Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Light Green

Being the mother of two young children has caused me to stop and take a fresh look at the world around me and think about what kind of a place it will be when my boys grow up. I am by no means an eco-freak, but I find myself gradually getting greener. There are so many things we can (easily) do to cut down on waste, and make life better and healthier for our children. Just a few ideas I would encourage anyone to try are: using re-usable grocery bags instead of plastic or paper (I just ordered some - yay!), recycling (we are trying to get better at doing this - it is very important to Jack, he always reminds us of our need to recycle), using cold water in the wash, line drying when possible, and for the mommies reading this - cloth diapering. Yes, I know it SOUNDS crazy, but it's actually really fun! We started cloth diapering O about 3 weeks ago and love it! There are some really cute diapees out there, and think about it - if you were a baby, what would you rather have on your bottom - plastic and paper, or soft cotton and fleece? Even if you only used cloth diapers just once a day, you would use approximately 1,000 less disposable diapers over the course of 3 years!! One baby wearing 5 disposable diapers a day (and that's a conservative number) uses 5,745 diapers in their lifetime! Multiply that times the number of babies born in the US every day and the number is astronomical! Disposable diapers are not biodegradable AT ALL, and actually require huge amounts of water to create the paper pulp with which they are manufactured (for those who could argue that cloth diapers are less eco-friendly due to the amount of water it takes to wash them). Below are some of my favorite "green" links to blogs and shopping sites: http://www.atoygarden.com/ http://journeytocrunchville.wordpress.com/ http://hautenature.blogspot.com/ http://www.wildflowerdiapers.com/ http://www.diaperpin.com/
http://likemerchantships.blogspot.com/ And because I am totally shameless when it comes to bombarding people with pictures of my ADORABLE children, here are some pictures of Owen from this past weekend.