It's Not That Hard Actually, Being Green

Philadelphia is trash-challenged, for sure.  Since we've moved here, I've gone from thinking I should call 911 when I see someone dumping bags of fast food garbage out of their car while stopped at a light to annoyed eye-rolling.  Similarly, we've shifted from making a weekly trek to three different grocery stores (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and Giant) to one trip to a regular grocery store.  We've learned to suck it up and buy conventional, out of convenience more than anything else.  Another example: back in Portland I always assumed I'd use cloth diapers, but here I was convinced by my germ-fearing South Philly teacher friends that this was NOT the way to go.  I relented, citing lots of reasons (laziness being one of them).

Recently the "green" in me (and therefore, in "us") has been reawakened.  We have grown increasingly unhappy with some of our choices--recycling and bringing our own grocery bags are simply not enough.  What caused this?  Being reminded of what is really important--via like-minded friends and family, the documentary "Food, Inc.", collaborating to create a recycling program at my school, and the reality that John and I are someone's PARENTS and that we are responsible for showing our son how to treat this world we live in.

So, what to do?  We can't change everything all at once, but we can do better.  These are our first moves, we think in the right direction.  Step one: let our dollar be our vote and only buy things we believe in.  The challenge here is that this can get expensive.  Our solution to that is to simply buy less.  Step two: revisit small choices, like light bulbs and usage, recycling more, buying used instead of new, etc.  Step three: switch to cloth diapers.

And this is the fun part, because we have seen first hand the amount of garbage diapers create.  We are happy to be joining the ranks of cloth diaper users around the world.  We are hoping to at least drastically cut down on our disposable usage.  It took a little set up--much less than my pre-baby-excuse-making self had imagined.  We had to...

Order new diapers.  We chose "econo-bum" because of the "econo" part. (Though I foresee a transition to the compatible "Flip" system).

 Make space for the new diapers. 

 Attach a special sprayer to the toilet.

And get used to Oscar's new bigger cloth diaper butt.

We are taking a "transitioning" approach: using only three disposables in the last two days.  Which means, we've managed to save eight disposable diapers from the landfill.  Yes, tootin' our own greening horns.

  

 And the bigger butt is still pretty cute.  Now, off to find us a rain barrel...