Aug 14, 2009

Eco-Friendly Friday

As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I am a convert to the world of cloth diapers. I would even say that I am little cloth diaper crazy. If I had the funds available, I would probably own one of every type of cute cloth diaper out there. There are so many great benefits to cloth diapering: no chemicals next to babies sensitive skin, earlier potty training (reportedly, I don't have first hand experience with this yet), cute fluffy diaper butt, adjustable absorbency, no more poop-up-the-back incidents, and the list goes on.

My focus for today is the reduction in consumer waste. I am amazed by the amount of waste some families in my neighborhood produce. Once Logan came along and we were using the disposable diapers, our trash output increased to two full bags twice a week! I couldn't believe it. Now that we are almost completely disposable free (except for the occasional between washes) we are down to only one full bag every week to week and a half. I'm expecting that number to drop even lower once we start our composting bin, as most of our trash is hard vegetable scraps that our garbage disposal would choke on. What could be better? Saving money AND reducing consumer waste all in one fell swoop!

What do you do to reduce your consumer waste? Please share your tip(s) in the comments section!

4 comments:

GrammyMary said...

We have curbside recycling in my town, however, since I live in an apartment complex we don't have the benefit of that. So, I take my recyclable paper to a collection box that is set up at a local store. One of our elementary schools started the paper recycling project and got the store to put the boxes (the project really took off and now there are 5 dumpster type boxes) in their parking lot. The money from the paper goes to the school. I don't drink a lot of bottled water, but when I do I take the empty bottles to work and recycle them there (I don't drink soda, so no cans to recycle).

Whitastic said...

We compost almost everything and use this to enrich our flower beds. In our flower beds we have a ton of fruits and veggies (I would post a picture but I don't know how or if I can in a comment). We have a dumpster at the school where we take ALL of our paper, including junk mail and have the curbside recycle bin for plastics that can be recycled at our local recycling plant. We have a bin for those plastics that our local plant can't handle and take it to the nearest plant once we get a substantial amount. We try to take our reusable bags to HEB but sometimes we forget and have to use the plastic. We always take a wad back with us on our next trip since they have a recycle bin specifically for plastic grocery bags. We may have one full trash bag every 2 weeks! We are always looking for ways to make our carbon footprint smaller and since we are looking for a new car, we looked at hybrids but they still have a few things that make them impractical for our needs.

Thanks to our little surprise/miracle baby, our next project will be a while out but it's at the top of our list........rain barrels for our yard and garden! Tons of places just throw away drums and are usually happy to give them to you if you just ask.

Charndra said...

Hi Simplistic Mom,
I'm visiting you from Australia. We have a worm farm, usually have chooks to eat scraps and contril pests and fertilize our veggie beds between plantings (we use a permaculture styled guild system),
and use a garden shredder for green waste, turning it into compost.

All homes have three bins where we live - a red lid for rubbish, a green lid for garden waste (which we mostly process on site) and a yellow lid for recyclables. It's a great visual reminder which makes it easy to sort.

I actually also empty our wet eco-disposables into the compost - the crystals are the same as sold in the garden shop, and the urea speeds composting and is a natural fertilizer too.

Poops we catch in the potty or toilet mostly, and we use cloth as well.

Charndra

Simplistic Mom said...

Thanks for all the great real life experiences with green living, keep up the good work!