It's Earth Day! Let's cloth diaper

I'm borrowing my friend Sarah's soapbox to bring a little public service announcement to my blog in honor of Earth Day. (I sit here with my free cup of coffee from Starbucks, also in honor of Earth Day :)) Please, join me on a journey through what I like to call "Timeline of Kristin's Environmental Awareness":

Elementary school Kristin: Played in creek in backyard in an area nicknamed "Mother Nature's Island;" participated in recycling club at school (the name "Earth Club" rings a bell), where we promoted awareness of saving the earth (singlehandedly, of course) and volunteered our weekends to bundle donated newspaper so it could be recycled.

Middle school Kristin: Recycled newsprint, aluminum cans and glass because parents did; turned lights/TV off whenever not in use because of reminders from parents that 'twas not I paying the electric bill.

High school Kristin: More of the same; this time, with attitude!

College Kristin: Recycled, recycled, recycled; encouraged suite mates to recycle (namely, beer and wine bottles).

Post-graduation Kristin: Recycled, recycled, recycled; turned off lights/TV when not in use because I 'twas paying the electric bill.

Employee Kristin: Brought bins in to work to collect cans and bottles (we, uh, drink a LOT of caffeine); bundle up and take recyclables home; provided bin to collect cardboard (we, uh, eat a lot of frozen meals).

Engaged and married Kristin: Works with Tim to be mindful of recyclables (we recycle newsprint, aluminum, glass, plastic and cardboard), use canvas bags at the grocery store, turn off lights/TV when not in use, turn off water while brushing teeth, etc.

Tim and I went on a date night a few months ago, and one of the commercials during the movie previews had a line that stuck with us. It was something along the lines of "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we are borrowing it from our children." Movie-goers were urged to thank their children for letting us borrow from them. Tim and I joked at the time, saying we needed to make sure we thanked Elle.

But in all seriousness, sometimes it scares me to think what the world will be like, environmentally, by the time she's my age. I got freaked out by the movie trailers that night - it seemed to be nothing but "the end of the world is coming!" movies coming out in the next year or so. Normally, I can handle those kind of "natural disasters overtake the planet" or "creatures from another planet conquer the human race" kind of movie plots. But post-Elle, I started to see the fear factor side of them, and I began to wonder what kind of world it'll be in 30 years.

I'm doing little bits to help protect the planet I'm borrowing from Elle. One way is by using cloth diapers. Yes, I use water and energy to wash and dry them. But in all honesty, I'm using less energy in general now that she's here - I don't have the TV on when she's awake, I rarely have time to watch TV when she's asleep, and ditto with the computer. And disposables take a lot of energy to manufacture and distribute ... and then just sit in a landfill for 500 years to decompose. I wash the cloth diapers 2-3 times a week - that's one extra cold rinse, one extra hot wash and two cycles on the dryer (I would LOVE to have a yard to hang these outside!) a few times a week. We use disposables occasionally, including the eight years three weeks it took for Elle's cord to fall off or for trips. When Elle wears disposables, I often end up doing extra loads of baby clothes, sheets, blankets, etc. anyway. If she has a pooplosion, the disposables just don't hold it in like cloth does.

Elle's adorable fluffy butt.

Cloth diapers can be nearly as convenient as disposables and are so stinking cute. These aren't the cloth diapers of our parents' era - there are snaps, there is velcro, there aren't pins. (Well, unless you want pins.) I have to tell you that when Elle is wearing a disposable, I can smell it the minute she pees. As we've introduced solids, Elle's bum has gotten a little irritated as she, uh, processes things, and cloth is good for baby's skin. No chemicals on baby's butt= generally a better thing. With the cloth diapers, things are much more contained. We haven't had a blowout diaper in months, and really, we had very few blowouts in cloth during Elle's intestine's infant stage. They are super absorbent and breathable - every time I imagine Elle sitting in a plastic-y disposable diaper for a long period of time in the Florida heat, I want to cry. With the cloth diapers, we're not throwing away our money with each change (in fact, the more we use them, the more our investment pays off), so I can change Elle as often as I want/need without a second of guilt. We also use cloth wipes a lot, so I can easily toss the wipes in with my cloth diaper laundry and don't have to worry about how many I need to go through.

I go back and forth on our primary reasoning for using cloth diapers, and really, most of the time, the cost savings are the primary reason. I've blogged about cloth diapers before, and money was the basic focus of that post. But lately, I keep coming back to the mounds of disposable diapers that we're not contributing to on a regular basis. (And I shudder to think about how many disposables we'd go through if we had more than one child in diapers at the same time.) There are eco-friendly disposable alternatives that are chlorine and bleach free and made with recycled and renewable resources, and they typically are a bit pricier than Huggies and Pampers. But I love knowing that we're pretty much set for future children when it comes to diapering needs. We have neutral diapers and covers, and the investments we've made for Elle's diapers are pretty much the only ones we'll need to make - ever. The hard part is stopping myself from shopping for more cute diapers :) If I try a diaper that I'm not quite sold on, the resale value is extremely high, so there is virtually no money lost.

Rockin' a cow diaper cover.

There's a movement right now called "Change 3 Things" - you can search for it on Facebook for more information or go here. But to boil it down - using cloth diapers for just three diaper changes a day can make a huge difference. Many families cloth diaper part-time, and this campaign asks for something reasonable in the crazy-busy world we live in - just three changes a day with cloth instead of disposables for one year.

Fellow blogger Jodie breaks down many common myths and misgivings about cloth diapering here. (Including dealing with poop! Did you know you're supposed to throw the poop in the toilet, even if you're using disposables? Landfills are not equipped to deal with human waste.) We don't have a diaper sprayer like Jodie, Sarah or many of my cloth diapering friends, but we use a specifically designated spatula-type thingie (that's the technical term) to scrape off the majority of Elle's solid poo in to the toilet. Lately, though, (for lack of a more subtle description), it just plops in to the toilet.

And like Jodie says in this post, cloth diapering does take some getting used to. It took me several months to figure out what type of diaper worked best for our lifestyle, what nighttime diaper options I wanted to explore, what accessories we needed and to get a good washing routine down. Tim picked up on how to use them quickly. Our babysitters have learned. My sister has learned. And there are many, many kinds to choose from, from super inexpensive to much pricier options. Fellow blogger Katie presents one of the most thorough breakdowns I have seen on types and brands in this post.

I implore you, if you're considering cloth diapering for even a nanosecond, give yourself a week or two, as well as several types of diapers, to really try things out before you make a decision. There are several companies that offer trial programs for you to figure out what works best for you without making a huge, up-front investment. If you're interested in cloth diapering but still have some questions, feel free to ask! I might not know the answer, but I might have a friend or resource that could help you out.

And if you consider automatically dismissing the idea of cloth diapering, I urge you to remember: "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we are borrowing it from our children."