When Kash (our 2nd baby) was littler and still in diapers, Chris stumbled upon a new type of diaper that we loved called gDiapers. They are sort of a cloth/disposable hybrid with a cloth and plastic, washable outer shell and a compostable/flushable/biodegradable inner liner. They work great, look cute and help ease our diaper conscience without resorting to full on cloth (which we tried with our first and HATED!). The website information even suggests that they are better than cloth because they don't require as much water to wash.
I can't say we have been entirely faithful to using our gDiapers, we do our best to use them when we are able. We started using gDiapers again when Isabelle was born. Again, we've been somewhat inconsistent in using them (depending on whether we have that little extra cash to spend) but we've done our best. Recently, we decided to go 'back on the g's' and I hope we can keep it up.
Anyway, back to the theme of my post. This morning as I was flushing and rinsing one of the nastiest diapers we've had in a while, I got poop on my finger and thought 'Man, this would be a lot easier with a disposable!' And then Super Green Momma stepped in and I realized, maybe that's the problem with society these days. Of course it's easier to just wrap your babies poop into a nice little package, toss it in the garbage can or diaper genie and never think about it again! But how is that fair to anyone. The diaper doesn't just 'go away' and neither do millions and millions of others.
This is much the same with so many other choices we make everyday. When we base our decisions on convenience in the moment, there are bigger consequences for the future. And I'm not just talking about garbage. This is true of the food that we consume, the things we purchase, and even the way we treat people. Perhaps we should stop seeing convenience as our highest goal and start paying attention to how our convenient decisions create inconvenience in the long run!
SO for now, I will accept when poop lands on my finger and see it as a minor inconvenience that just might do the world a favour in the long run!
Friday, November 26, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
In Defense of No Impact Man
Chris and I watched a documentary the other night which, I've gotta say, has inspired me immensely. It was called 'No Impact Man' and followed one New York family in their quest to live for one year making no impact on the earth. The couple and their baby girl went through various stages to their plan which included reducing (to almost none) their consumption and thereby their waste; eliminating non-human powered transportation, electricity and even toilet paper along the way.
Throughout the documentary, the filmmaker comes up against a surprising amount of negative criticism over his project, from environmentalists who accuse him of portraying a crazed hippy of some sort. Even the filmmakers wife received an alarmingly large amount of criticism from co-workers, concerned about her well being and the unsanitary conditions her family was living in!
The thing that was evident to me while watching the film, that perhaps wasn't quite so evident to critics as the year-long project was going on was that this was not a rule for life being portrayed, but simply a project. The filmmaker was just trying to take the idea to the extreme and see what happened. If anyone should understand this way of thinking, it's got to be me! Our family are no strangers to extreme thinking. I am married to a man who, for fun, runs 100+ miles, just because he can. Over the years of his addiction to ultra-marathoning, I've come to understand the idea that sometimes we can and should just push the envelope a little to go beyond comfort to see what is possible. My husband would never say that everyone can or should run 100 miles, but, if by running 100 miles, he can inspire someone who has never considered running to run 5 miles or even to simply walk more often, the experiment has been a success! Likewise, I don't think No Impact Man's intention was to have everyone give up electricity or toilet paper! It was simply an experiment in what IS possible that can serve as inspiration to the rest of us not-quite-so-extreme individuals.
So, I have indeed been inspired by No Impact Man and his family to continue trying to make a difference in this world, one tiny step at a time.
The end of the film shows No Impact Man at the end of the year long project, flicking on the power to his New York apartment and the resulting talks and visits to inspire young people and to talk about his experiment. The concept that struck me most was that this type of environmentalism has very little to do with global warming and the gloom and doom we hear about everyday and more to do with simply understanding that we are not alone in this world. The choices we make everyday affect more people than we can ever know and when we wake up to that fact and the switch is flicked in our minds, we realize that anything is possible when we stop being self-centred and start taking responsibility for our actions.
No Impact Man website.
Throughout the documentary, the filmmaker comes up against a surprising amount of negative criticism over his project, from environmentalists who accuse him of portraying a crazed hippy of some sort. Even the filmmakers wife received an alarmingly large amount of criticism from co-workers, concerned about her well being and the unsanitary conditions her family was living in!
The thing that was evident to me while watching the film, that perhaps wasn't quite so evident to critics as the year-long project was going on was that this was not a rule for life being portrayed, but simply a project. The filmmaker was just trying to take the idea to the extreme and see what happened. If anyone should understand this way of thinking, it's got to be me! Our family are no strangers to extreme thinking. I am married to a man who, for fun, runs 100+ miles, just because he can. Over the years of his addiction to ultra-marathoning, I've come to understand the idea that sometimes we can and should just push the envelope a little to go beyond comfort to see what is possible. My husband would never say that everyone can or should run 100 miles, but, if by running 100 miles, he can inspire someone who has never considered running to run 5 miles or even to simply walk more often, the experiment has been a success! Likewise, I don't think No Impact Man's intention was to have everyone give up electricity or toilet paper! It was simply an experiment in what IS possible that can serve as inspiration to the rest of us not-quite-so-extreme individuals.
So, I have indeed been inspired by No Impact Man and his family to continue trying to make a difference in this world, one tiny step at a time.
The end of the film shows No Impact Man at the end of the year long project, flicking on the power to his New York apartment and the resulting talks and visits to inspire young people and to talk about his experiment. The concept that struck me most was that this type of environmentalism has very little to do with global warming and the gloom and doom we hear about everyday and more to do with simply understanding that we are not alone in this world. The choices we make everyday affect more people than we can ever know and when we wake up to that fact and the switch is flicked in our minds, we realize that anything is possible when we stop being self-centred and start taking responsibility for our actions.
No Impact Man website.
Monday, November 22, 2010
There Are Worms in My Kitchen!
A month or so ago, my oldest daughter brought home the newest members of our family: a handful of slimy red worms. Her Sparks group had been learning about composting and had an expert in to teach the girls how to make simple kitchen compost bins. Chris and I were actually quite excited about this as vermicomposting is something we've wanted to try for a while.
So, after staying late at Sparks to chat with the worm guy, we brought home our 5 gallon pails, worms and other bits and pieces to get us started.
Before I go any further, I'll give you the backstory on the compost situation in our house. We currently live in a strata townhouse complex. We have a small backyard with a teeny garden which is in spitting distance of at least 3 sets of neighbours. For the first 2 years that we lived here, we cringed everytime we had to throw away food scraps. We've thought about various solutions but nothing seemed to make sense for our family. Finally, this year, for my lovely husbands 31st birthday I gave him a gift that I'm sure only he could fully appreciate...a rotating compost drum. We've been using that as our main compost since April but have discovered two main drawbacks. 1) It smells a whole lot more than the manufacturers let on and 2) to actually get compost from the bin, it needs to be filled and then left alone for at least 2 months. Which means we can't continuosly add food scraps all year round. So, we've been coping with it and trying to formulate a compost solution and it has now come in the form of our kitchen compost bin. Our plan is, since we would like fresh compost by April, to continue using the drum for the bulk of our food waste until February. At that time, we will hopefully have our indoor bin working well enough to handle our families needs until the spring.
We've started out quite slowly with the worms, just adding a handful of scraps every week or so. It seems to be paying off since, now a month and a bit into the process, our worm population has grown significantly and we have been delighted (really!) to see evidence of worm reproduction. (I'm sure that is a sentence I never thought I would use!)
So, a few observations on the kitchen worms for you:
1)No, they don't smell at all. To be honest, I actually enjoy the scent of our bin. When the lid is on, despite air holes, there is no smell at all. When you do take the lid off, it simply smells of fresh, healthy earth.
2)Be sure to keep the food scraps covered with the worms bedding material (in our case old newspaper)
3)Worms like to be moist. When we first started out, the materials inside seemed to dry out quickly so we just added a few spritzes of water and all was well.
4)Worm bins are a great tool for teaching kids about composting. We talk about issues such as composting and recycling a lot in our house and the kids have been well aware of our outdoor compost drum. However, having the worms right in our kitchen, the kids get to see the entire process everyday. They've seen the scraps go in and they've seen how it's all been broken down into 'worm poop' and the resulting compost tea. They've seen how worms form egg sacs around their bodies and then what those egg sacs look like when they are shed.
I hope to find the instructions online on how to make our particular type of setup and I will post it here.
Hope you will consider adding worms to your family!!
Stay Green,
SuperGreenMomma
So, after staying late at Sparks to chat with the worm guy, we brought home our 5 gallon pails, worms and other bits and pieces to get us started.
Before I go any further, I'll give you the backstory on the compost situation in our house. We currently live in a strata townhouse complex. We have a small backyard with a teeny garden which is in spitting distance of at least 3 sets of neighbours. For the first 2 years that we lived here, we cringed everytime we had to throw away food scraps. We've thought about various solutions but nothing seemed to make sense for our family. Finally, this year, for my lovely husbands 31st birthday I gave him a gift that I'm sure only he could fully appreciate...a rotating compost drum. We've been using that as our main compost since April but have discovered two main drawbacks. 1) It smells a whole lot more than the manufacturers let on and 2) to actually get compost from the bin, it needs to be filled and then left alone for at least 2 months. Which means we can't continuosly add food scraps all year round. So, we've been coping with it and trying to formulate a compost solution and it has now come in the form of our kitchen compost bin. Our plan is, since we would like fresh compost by April, to continue using the drum for the bulk of our food waste until February. At that time, we will hopefully have our indoor bin working well enough to handle our families needs until the spring.
We've started out quite slowly with the worms, just adding a handful of scraps every week or so. It seems to be paying off since, now a month and a bit into the process, our worm population has grown significantly and we have been delighted (really!) to see evidence of worm reproduction. (I'm sure that is a sentence I never thought I would use!)
So, a few observations on the kitchen worms for you:
1)No, they don't smell at all. To be honest, I actually enjoy the scent of our bin. When the lid is on, despite air holes, there is no smell at all. When you do take the lid off, it simply smells of fresh, healthy earth.
2)Be sure to keep the food scraps covered with the worms bedding material (in our case old newspaper)
3)Worms like to be moist. When we first started out, the materials inside seemed to dry out quickly so we just added a few spritzes of water and all was well.
4)Worm bins are a great tool for teaching kids about composting. We talk about issues such as composting and recycling a lot in our house and the kids have been well aware of our outdoor compost drum. However, having the worms right in our kitchen, the kids get to see the entire process everyday. They've seen the scraps go in and they've seen how it's all been broken down into 'worm poop' and the resulting compost tea. They've seen how worms form egg sacs around their bodies and then what those egg sacs look like when they are shed.
I hope to find the instructions online on how to make our particular type of setup and I will post it here.
Hope you will consider adding worms to your family!!
Stay Green,
SuperGreenMomma
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