Go Green. Just Do It!

Go GREEN!
Do it for yourself, your family, the earth, your future, or just do it for Cannon!

When I became pregnant, Brett and I became more conscious the things we could do to be more earth friendly.

We recycle! This is an EASY thing to do to make a difference. This doesn't take much effort. In Savannah we bought 3 white trash cans, put them in our storage room outside and loaded them with our sorted recycleables and Brett took them to be recycled twice a month. Once we moved here it got easier. Now, we just fill up a bin with everything (glass, plastics, tin and aluminum) and the city picks it up for us. They do not pick up our cardboard which we have a lot of but we have not let that stop us! For a while Brett would take it to work and put it in a recycling bin that was near his office, they have since moved it. On Sunday, he loaded up our cardboard that we have been saving since January and decided we would find a place to take it. Even though the recycling places were closed. We ended up taking it to a school and placing it in their recycling bin. I was a little nervous about this. Among our cereal boxes were mailing boxes with our names and address. Would they notice on Monday that the container was full and report us for illegal "recycling". There were no signs posted that said, "Private Use", etc. We assured ourselves that we could not possibly get in trouble for recycling! Could we?

Okay, back to the subject at hand.

We use cloth diapers most of the time (there are occasions like outings, trips, etc. when disposables are just a little easier). I mop my floor with vinegar and water. (Smile, Cheryl). We use reusable shopping bags and if we forget them, we recycle the plastic ones! Although, you should see the amount of bags in my garage right now, just waiting to be recycled. I have a hard time remembering my shopping bags. We stopped buying bottled water and use a Brita (this was a big thing). we used to buy sooooooo much bottled water.

Amendment: I forgot to mention a very important thing: Compact FLUORESCENT LIGHT BULBS! We use them in EVERY light in our house and convinced it lowers our bill tremendously! (FYI: every American home replaced just one light bulb with a qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars).

Anyway, we do a few things to help reduce our carbon footprint. We could definitely do more (like get rid of our SUV).

Basically, the reason for this post is to 1) encourage you to think about how you could be a little more green and 2)to tell you about my new friend and this new challenge.

I use waaaay to many paper towels. I have been thinking a lot about how I use cloth diapers and then use an entire roll of paper towels preparing one meal. Hum. Should I do something about this? This has been a thought that I mentioned to Brett, but never did anything about.

Well, my friend decided to challenge herself to see if she could stop her obsession with paper towels and Clorox wipes. She succeeded...and she is trying to encourage me to do the same.

Can I do it? I am not so sure. I read her blog challenge and still went out and bought a huge pack of Bounty Select-a-Size to replenish my stock. Should I finish this pack before I begin the challenge?

I am not convinced yet, but I am really excited to have a new friend to challenge me to be more green.

Do you think she will have me giving up toilet paper next? (Do not get any ideas, Joy!)

To be continued...

Back to Basics, Well Kind of...

Well, when I was pregnant I said if I could stay home with Cannon that I would use cloth diapers. I've been home for about 18 weeks now and decided I needed to start my research. After many Google searches, I FINALLY purchased some cloth diapers! I am so excited to start using these.


Here is a picture of Cannon in his first cloth diaper! He is just precious. It feels so sweet, cozy and we are helping our environment too! Now, today is our first day and I just put this diaper on Cannon at 5pm. I have never known anyone who has used these, so I do not know what to expect. Stay tuned...





Did you know?

It is estimated that 27.4 billion disposable diapers are consumed every year in the U.S.

The instructions on a disposable diaper package advice that all fecal matter should be deposited in the toilet before discarding, yet less than one half of one percent of all waste from single-use diapers goes into the sewage system.

Over 92% of all single-use diapers end up in a landfill.

In 1988, nearly $300 million dollars were spent annually just to discard disposable diapers, whereas cotton diapers are reused 50 to 200 times before being turned into rags.

No one knows how long it takes for a disposable diaper to decompose, but it is estimated to be about 250-500 years, long after your children, grandchildren and great, great, great grandchildren will be gone.

Disposable diapers are the third largest single consumer item in landfills, and represent about 4% of solid waste. In a house with a child in diapers, disposables make up 50% of household waste.

Disposable diapers generate sixty times more solid waste and use twenty times more raw materials, like crude oil and wood pulp.

The manufacture and use of disposable diapers amounts to 2.3 times more water wasted than cloth.

Over 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feedstocks and 20 pounds of chlorine are used to produce disposable diapers for one baby EACH YEAR.

In 1991, an attempt towards recycling disposable diapers was made in the city of Seattle, involving 800 families, 30 day care centers, a hospital and a Seattle-based recycler for a period of one year. The conclusion made by Procter & Gamble was that recycling disposable diapers was not an economically feasible task on any scale.