Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

I recently decided that driving a Prius and renewing my Sierra Club membership from time to time will not change anything about the direction we - humans - are taking our planet. I am convinced that going at the rate we are going, the planet would be a hostile and inhospitable place with little or no natural beauty before long. The thought of this was frightening before. It is intolerable now after we had Zoe. Dennis and I worry about the planet Zoe will inherit and the kind of life and times she will live in as a result. So rather than whing about the Hummers and SUVs, it is time to do more, starting today, starting with ourselves.

Taking personal responsibility means some lifestyle changes. Thus far, we noted and implemented a few we can make within our power. For example:

1. Hanging clothes out to dry instead of using the dryer.
2. Using cold water wash instead of hot or warm for our laundry.
3. Taking short showers (no more luxuriating!) and turning off the water when lathering.
4. Being more careful with our use of ziplock bags. Reduce and reuse comes to mind. (My mom was the true conservationist after all. She always cleaned and reused the bags, something I pooh-poohed as not hygienic. That said, I did read somewhere about plastic breaking down and all. Perhaps the solution is to stock up on the glass containers and storing everything in them).
5. Reusing the little plastic bags they give out at supermarkets for wrapping vegetables and such in.
6. Driving about less (no more going to the grocery every day or even every other day! Even if Trader Joe's is only 5 miles down the road, every little adds up).
7. Stopping at Starbucks less for my "Doppio over ice in a grande cup." The plastic cups, even if recycled, add up! (This will be a really hard one).

There are a few other things I would like to do but they require a greater investment in time (research), money and effort. They are:

1. Turning to renewable sources of energy. That is, solar power. On this, I looked into the investment needed and, not surprisingly, even after hefty government subsidy (in the form of rebate) and tax credit, it is still an $18,000 to $20,000 investment. Sure, we would be done with electric bill for good, and might even make some spare cash by selling unused energy back to the grid, but the upfront cost is too much for now. I'm researching the other alternative, which is to buy our electric energy from a solar company. They will install the solar panels on our roof and we buy the energy from them. The upfront cost is little, our immediate electric bill will amount to just about the same (on average $300 a month, including gas), but long term cost will be much lower as the $/watt is locked in. I'm still studying this avenue and will have a better picture of cost/benefit when I meet the salesperson (Business is very brisk evidently, he told me he would have to get back to me in a week or two!).

2. Reducing our waste, or waste that ends up in a landfill. To do this, other than buying less and buying less with lots of packaging, we would have to turn to composting. I'm researching this and will soon find out if this is something we can manage.

3. On reducing our waste, I'm also looking into the diaper question. Zoe is on disposable diapers, which I did not realize take a whooping 500 years to break down. (And this is 500 years in optimal conditions). Zoe uses about six to eight diapers a day, which means, assuming she is potty trained at 24 months and averaging 7 diapers a day, we would have used about 5110 by the time she is two years old! The eco-impact per child is significant. That said, we did not even consider cloth because the hassle of cloth seemed daunting to both Dennis and I. They did not seem to work as well (in terms of leaks and dampness and associated diaper rash) and cleaning the soiled diapers would be very time consuming. Then, there is the whole issue of the other resources (water and electricity) used to clean the diapers. It seemed like a toss up, a choose your sin situation. Well, I might be changing my mind about this. Turns out that the cloth diapers I had in mind were the cloth diapers of 30 years ago. These days, the cloth diapers (and the panties holding them) works very well, supposedly. So it seems that the crux of the issue is resource usage (including resource used to make the diaper). On this, I'm still studying and considering.

Incidentally, during my research, I came across these two products on the market. One is a hybrid system (gdiapers) where the diaper core is biodegradable and the other is a disposable that is completely biodegradable. But as I learned by reading various mommy blogs, to say something is biodegradable is not saying much. If the biodegradable item ends up in a landfill, it would have a hard time decomposing as landfills in America are anaerobic. If we do end up with the disposable diaper that is biodegradable, I would try to compost it. Well, if I end up composting.

3. Finally, though this is only tangentially related to lowering our carbon footprint, I would like to grow our own organic vegetables. I love the idea but gardening is very daunting to me. My fingers are far from green. I'll report here if I ever get around to it. It seems a natural thing to do if I do end up composting.

Well, that's what we are doing for now. I have to say that some of this lifestyle changes is only possible because I am now a stay-at-home-mom (gasp! I said it!). For example, the drying the clothes out on a rack was almost a whole day affair as there were more clothes than rack space. A working mother or father would probably have little patience with or time for it.

Anyhow, we hope it is not too late to turn back the clock or to change course. This is not only for Zoe. It is for all the babies out there. Baby animals included.