Mother's going GREEN Day 7 - My take on Cloth Diapers

On Sunday (yesterday) was our first official day of cloth diapers. I thought I would leave my comments on them for today as now I can comment based on experience.

I LOVE THEM !!!! Truly and honestly they are great. I have had two kids in disposables for a 21/2 years each and would have never ever thought of making the switch to cloth. They are easy and slim fitting (and really now that is all I can say about them). I want to say they are disposable, but when you think of how long it takes for a single diaper to compose (they say up to 500 years), is it really disposable.

Cloth diapers are great - no more complicated than a disposable to put on to a baby. There are no pins like in the days way back when. If you plan to wash your diapers every second day then you do not need to put them in a pail to soak and deal with that yucky mess. What about the poop you say - well with disposables and especially in young breastfed babies as my youngest is. Their bowel movement are so runny that I was always having to rinse my child's clothes as the disposables always leaked no matter what. My baby has had 4 bowel movements and not once did the cloth leak onto her clothes. Okay so now I am dealing with a poopy diaper instead of poopy clothes.

I have only one con for the cloth diapers - well it makes my baby's bum look so much bigger - yes they are quite bulky compared to disposables.

I realize that there is still some debate out there as to weather cloth is more environmentally friendly compared to disposables.... This is how I see it:

• Cloth have no dangerous chemicals in them (both good for my baby and the environment). Disposables have bleaching agents, and chemicals that are linked to toxic shock syndrome. Those chemicals are not good for the environment or my baby. It also these chemicals that lead to diaper rash (skin irritation) Cloth diapers are less likely to cause a rash.


• Cloth diapers will last as long as your baby is in diapers and for future babies you may have, saving the environment and your bank account. Disposables well they are expensive and take forever to decompose. Since I plan not to have any more children, I am already thinking that these cloth diapers will make the best cleaning rags ever.


• Washing cloth diapers is said to use up as much energy as flushing the toilet 5 times in a day. If this little baby was going to the toilet then we would be flushing it 5 times a day.


• Furthermore Treehuggers.com They say that cloth diapers has a 53% ecological footprint of that of disposables. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/how-to-green-your-baby.php and since my goal is to reduce our family's footprint I am sticking with cloth.

For more websites debating cloth or disposable (although it seems cloth wins) visit:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2004/12/ecotip_nappies.php

http://www.ec.gc.ca/envirozine/english/issues/45/any_questions_e.cfm

AS FOR ME I GIVE CLOTH DIAPERS THE FULL GO AHEAD AND GLAD I MADE THE SWITCH FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND MY BABY !!!!!

Mother's going GREEN Day 1 - Our Family's Ecological Footprint

Going Green for the modern mother is an additional challenge added to her already hectic day, but after being inspired by others going green and reading a terrific book "The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating" by ALISA SMITH and J.B. MACKINNON, I could no longer turn a blind eye to the environmental crisis that our world is in.

Today, I sat down and calculated our family's ecological footprint and we came to a whooping 6.48 earths. That is, if everyone on the planet lived our lifestyle we would need 6.48 earths to sustain it. I am sorry but that is just pathetic. The average worlds ecological footprint is 1.5 earths, clearly our family is way beyond that and drastic steps need to be taken in order to reduce this footprint.

Now our family already recycles as much as we can, we also have done away with the plastic shopping bags, although one or two may find their way back into our household, yet it is not enough; there is so much more that we NEED to be doing....

And so our journey begins: Reducing our footprint!!!

To learn more about Ecological Footprints and to calculate your own Footprint you can visit

http://www.rprogress.org/index.htm - They offer great tips on reducing your footprint and some frequently asked questions. Also for a small donation you can have a poster of your Ecological Footprint done up. This is what I did and have posted it on our refrigerator as a reminder of our challenge.

For a children orientated quiz to determine their footprints you can visit http://www.kidsfootprint.org/ - this proved to be a fun and interactive activity for my 5 year old son.

For more information on "100 Mile Diet" book you can visit: http://100milediet.org/book/