Convenience or the Environment?

I have to admit that I don't always think about the impact of the choices I make on the environment. But after having my son and seeing the amount of trash (think diapers) one little boy can create I am trying to be more conscientious about the environment.

I was listening to NPR (National Public Radio) this weekend and they were talking about carbon footprints. Wikipedia's definition of carbon footprints is a "measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide'. It is meant to be useful for individuals and organizations to conceptualize their personal (or organizational) impact in contributing to global warming." The example on NPR (I hope I have the details right) that the speaker had was flowers from Holland. They did a study on floral shops in Europe (I believe it was England) and then got flowers from both Holland and an African country. Although Holland was much closer and it would seem that there would be less of a carbon footprint, this was not the case. It turns out that because of the seasons most of Holland's flowers have to be grown in greenhouses and because of the cost of upkeep of those and other factors it's actually worse on the environment, even though the African flowers have to travel further.

It just made me think. I have slowly been switching Jacob over to cloth diapers and while I feel that there is less of a carbon footprint by doing this, I still have to remember that the cloth diapers must be manufactured, packaged, shipped, and will require the use of natural resources in order to keep them clean. But with the knowledge that cloth diapers can and will be used again for subsequent children, I still feel this is the right choice.

I just read recently that disposable diapers were never meant to end up in landfills with human waste in them. Our landfills were not designed to handle human waste-I think the original plan was that the dirty diapers would be emptied into the toilet, but obviously almost no one does. So, "3.5 million tons of diapers, or 18 to 23 billion, are sent to landfills each year" http://www.ewg.org/node/21581. Holy Cow!! And I am still learning more about the chemicals used to make disposables that are making the move to cloth diapers even more appealing.

So, when I started writing this post I was planning to give some ideas on altenatives to those convenience products that we all love to use. But somehow I got distracted, ah, the human mind :) So I'll be posting again shortly! Have a great Friday!