The Story of Stuff

I heard about this video recently on one of the blogs that I subscribe to. As we approach the Christmas season, I'm once again reminded as to why I don't like the gift giving aspect of this holiday. The video is 20 minutes long, but well worth the watch.



Some interesting links:
The Story of Stuff Website

The Story of Cap and Trade

Article: What really happens with the plastics we send to the recycling depot

A bunch of posts worth reading

The posts here are partially for my reference and partially for your reading educational pleasure...

Top 10 Green Living Myths

The Serious Need For Play

How Dangerous is PVC In Toys

Eco-Friendly Cleaning

Toxic Pregnancies

Maybe I just read too much, but this article and this article really worries me. Does my bebe even have a fighting chance before it's even born? Maybe I should just stop reading this stuff all together, after all, they say that ignorance is bliss.

I do like the second article's tips of what we can do for living a healthier lifestyle. I think a lot of those items are doable. However, going green can cost money, especially if you're buying organic, toxic-free everything. There are plenty of green products on the market, but it's still a bigger cost than the non-green items.

I'm still researching how else I can go green, but I'm finding it pretty draining even trying to focus on things that are non-baby right now. My biggest obsession is finding the perfect cloth diaper, but I do have a desire to slowly green other parts of my life and our household, not just for the bebe, but for ourselves as well, while being mindful of the environment. And on a budget too.

I've managed to bookmark a bunch of sites, but there is so much information out there that it's hard to filter it out the real information from the noise. And if even if I am able to do so, trying to find what works best for our family takes time, research and experimentation.

Baby steps, Weed, baby steps.

Flushable Diapers?

If you haven't heard about flushable diapers, there is one on the market. I won't identify the brand, but the name will be in this article. As much as the makers of this brand tout this as the best of both worlds between disposables and cloth, and an "eco-friendly" option, there are a lot of things that people don't think about that are pointed out in the article. The article also points out that it's still cheaper to use real cloth diapers.

Again, there is a price for convenience. If it's not on your pocketbook, it's on the environment, or your health, or something else. I have lately been questioning if things that are advertised as being "green" or "organic" or "eco-friendly" really are. It's easy to take things at face value, especially since the green movement has really picked up over the last few years. However, people are lazy, or they are misinformed, or they are uneducated, and don't always realise the impact of their choices. And people will buy just about anything as long as they feel that the work is done for them.

To be fair, we all don't have enough time during the day. I for one am finding it more and more difficult to balance my work-life situation, how more difficult will it be to balance everything out when the bebe comes. But I suppose everyone dictates how they will run their own life and what they choose to spend their time on.

However, you must be somewhat informed and consumer savvy. For instance, I've seen "organic" mandarin oranges in our grocery stores. Not only was there no "certified organic" label on the box, but even better, these oranges were imported from China! Had we not taken the 2 minutes to even look at the label, we may have been duped into believing that they really were organic.

My point: do you homework people. This green movement is confusing enough as it is, but at least be educated in what you're buying. If you choose to buy the product even after weighing the pros and cons, that's your prerogative. As they always say, cavet emptor, let the buyer beware!

Cloth Diapers

In an effort to reduce costs and to be somewhat more environmentally friendly, Hubby and I will be trying to use cloth diapers for the bebe. Today, we went to a diapering clinic to help us understand a bit more about what cloth diapering is all about. I had done a ton of research on cloth diapers, but until we actually held the different ones in our hands, it was hard to conceptualise all the different choices out there.

And there are a lot of different choices! I'm not even going to get into all the differences you can have with diapers, diaper covers, liners, doublers, and inserts. You can read this Cloth Diapering Guide here, and more Diapering 101 info here.

I will tell you that there is a bit of experimentation, and trial and error; that's what I've heard from a lot of people. So that may be a bit of frustration, patience and endurance to go getting it to work. But if I can reuse my diapers, or even have them recycled, biodegrade or reused by someone else, I'm going with this option. Or at least try. I definitely will try not to let the lure of convenience with disposables be my scape goat (by the way, I lot of people also tell me that you need to sometimes experiment with different brands of diapers, and they are notorious for leaking as well).

Will I never use disposables? I'm not naive enough to think that will never happen. But I'm at least willing to give the cloth diapering thing a good college try. Some of my friends have looked at me like I'm crazy when I mention using cloth diapers. Some things I've heard is that "they leak" (so do disposables), or "you'll have to do a lot of washing" (still costs less over time than buying disposable diapers), or "you'll get diaper rash" (you get them more with disposables).

My stance on this is that, like everything else with the baby, you need to figure out how things are going to work, yes it takes time and perseverance, and yes, it's going to be frustrating. However, there are lots of resources online, if you're patient enough to look for them. I've already bookmarked a number of diapering reference sites. And it never hurts to ask people for advice, that is sometimes the best source of information.

Often convenience comes at a heavy price on the environment, and I feel that this compromise isn't good enough for me. So cloth diapers, here I come!

Trying to be greener...

This is a very familiar symbol to most of us: reduce, reuse, recycle. This is certainly not a new concept; I was taught the 3 R's from an early age. But as we live in an ever-increasing world of instant gratification and disposible materialism, I think many of us (including myself) have forgotten this lesson in favour of getting what you want, now! and convenience.

One of my goals this year is to green my household more. I feel this is a ongoing work-in-progress, because as I do more to green myself, I also learn more. But for the basics, I try to think about the 3 Rs with any product that I use day-to-day:

Reduce

• Do I really need to buy this item? Perhaps I can think about buying it, or find a better/cheaper/more environmental option out there.
• Does the item really need all that packaging that gets thrown into the garbage right away?
  

Reuse

• Can I reuse this item in a different way?
  
• Can someone else reuse this item after I've been done with it?

Recycle

• If you really think about it, everything, and I do mean everything, eventually has an end-of-life: in other words, it will end up being thrown out. So, is there another way the item can reincarnate itself without having to end up in the dump?

This past month it really hit home how much crap we had. We actually threw out, sold, gave away or recycled a good portion of what we had. I normally insist on doing a major purge every year, but Evil Homework took up all of my spare time over the last three years, so we didn't purge and we accumulated stuff. However, with the bebe coming, it really put the purge in a much different perspective, mostly because we really don't have a lot of storage space and we're introducing a third warm body into the house who will be a big magnet for lots of baby stuff.

You'll be surprised at what you can recycle or give away nowadays. Some things that we sold, recycled, or gave away included:

• CD-R/CD-RW: we had about 50 or so, and it was really hard finding a place who would take them. Fortunately, Future Shop and Best Buy has bins that will take this stuff
• Old electronics, including cell phones
• Batteries
• Paper (a lot which we shred as it confidential information)
• Books: given to the library where they turn around and sell them for a profit. The monies then go back into the library to fund their book circulation supply
• DVD/VHS tapes/CDs: also to the library
• Clothing: went to the shelter
• Older cameras: Hubby sold them on Craigslist. There are still people who like and use film cameras, go figure
• Furniture (still yet to be gotten rid of): it will go to a good home as soon as it stops snowing and we can move them out of our house
• Computer parts: At one point, we had about 6-7 computers between the two of us, never mind all the miscellaneous computer parts floating around. Most of these have been disassembled, and the parts brought to the recycling depot
  
• Misc electronics, including adapters: to the recycling depot
  

Don't get me wrong, we are still guilty of throwing things out, we just trying to do less of it. And we will still buy things that are not reusable nor recyclable. We are, after all, the product of this materialistic society that we live in.

It's also getting difficult to figure out what we need for the baby, and what is deemed "nice-to-have", mostly because I've never done this baby thing myself yet. I'm not trying to reduce the number of things just because I'm trying to be more environmentally friendly, it's also easier on the pocketbook as well. I've managed to source out some baby consignment stores around town, and I'm hoping to use Craiglist, UsedVancouver, Kijiji and eBay to keep costs down. But I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't buy things that were frivolous for myself, my household, or for the baby. Trying to figure these things out, especially for the baby, is a hard task, and one way to do so is by doing research and reading what others have to say.

Wish me luck for a greener year!