Any Pro Green/Environmental parents?? (recycle, reusable, plastic, buy)

[carolinajack]

Do you use Cloth or disposable diapers? any where you purchase or order inexpensive Cloth diapers?

[jkmewright]

I got mine off of ebay. There is a HUGE variety and some of the cutest covers too.

[irishmom]

Ok I didn't do the diaper thing...my bad. In my (poor at best) defense if I had known of a biodegrable disposable diaper at the time my children were in diapers I would have used those instead...but the cloth ones were too icky for me to think about...like I said, my bad.

However we have tried to be as green as we can by doing the following:

I have banned the use of paper plates, cups, grocery bags (we have cloth reusable bags and I don't place produce in the plastic bags at the market) and incandescent light bulbs from the house. We also use energy saver power strips on all our appliances to prevent "vampire" electric usage.

I will not however give up paper towels (I do dog rescue and I need these to clean up after all of them!) and toilet paper (for obvious reasons)...but I do buy products made from recycled paper...at least it's not "original sin"...LOL

We also installed low flow toilets and only run the dishwasher when full and washer if the load is a full load. I hang dry most of what I wash, and dry the rest on low heat (which someone told me was better, this could be wrong).

My current environmental sin is I won't go for the low flow shower head, way too hard to get the conditioner out of your hair with those! So I would say I'm more of a mint green at this point.

[RedWingsFan]

I'm a vegetarian, into the whole natural living thing and into environmental issues. However, I stuck with disposable diapers. Why? Because although you might THINK there is a big savings on the environment by using cloth ones there really isn't.

Why? With cloth diapers you are still using the resources to produce the cloth diapers and using a lot of water to wash them. You are just swapping what resource you will use. Neither are good on the environment, what would be best is for the darn kids to come out potty trained or to use nothing at all.

Wait..that wouldn't work either because you'd still need to clean up the mess, thus using more water and possibly some sort of cleaning supply and say a mop or something (resources used to make all of those things).

Plus it's downright gross to scrape out poopy cloth diapers and wash that mess in your wash machine.

I make cuts everywhere else in my life and I can guarantee that the footprint I leave in society is minimal compared to most other people. But that's the one area that I'm not going to compromise on. Either way you are using resources. You cant escpate it.

[BlueWillowPlate]

We used a diaper service the first year for both our kids.
It really wasn't that expensive at all.
The second year, until the kid was toilet trained, we did disposable.

[jkmewright]

About those cloth diapers... I found that until the umbilical cord comes off, disposable are better. The cloth diapers "wick" fluid and unless you can keep it (the diaper) off the cord it may take longer to heal. Now, I am no professional diaperer but that's what happened to me.

[carolinajack]

good insights and experiences. I was raised on cloth, i guess i am a bit older than most here and they were quite natural. I am not an environmentalist necessarily but pretty Green--we call ourselves Crunchy Conservatives. I love the cloth diapers now and the costs of them compared to the disposables with washing is a few thousand dollars for us.

Thanks all

[Cattknap]

I used cloth diapers for the first few months and then disposables after that....it takes lots of water and detergent and electricity to wash and dry cloth diapers....I would say it is at least an environmental draw as to which is better.

[RedWingsFan]

Originally Posted by Cattknap

I used cloth diapers for the first few months and then disposables after that....it takes lots of water and detergent and electricity to wash and dry cloth diapers....I would say it is at least an environmental draw as to which is better.

Exactly, that's the same way I feel...

[carolinajack]

water is replenishable, disposable diapers take thousands of years to break down in a land fill and are made with petroleum products, you can buy the same detergent, hang the nappys out to dry, and they are nothing close to as expensive.