A little enviromental flare...

I like to think of myself as eco conscious or eco friendly. I'm not overly committed to all things green (and should be more) but am conscious of my actions and what they do to contribute to or repair environmental damage.

We've tried to implement what we can around the house with energy efficient bulbs, lighting timers, recycling, buying local or growing your own produce, etc and are cognizant of the trades offs of not recycling vs. letting that truck drive 100 miles to the nearest center.....however, with the impending birth of our child it opens a whole new set of things to think about - the biggest of which is diapers!

It really bothers me to know that 1 disposable diaper can last up to 500 years in a land fill and that over 50 million diapers enter landfills everyday! However, I'm not sure I can handle full cloth diapers. I plan on going back to work not long after our little one is born and not many places around here will deal with cloth. So I set out in search of more information and options - thank you Mr. Google!

While looking up more info on cloth diapers I came across a hybrid of sorts called gDiapers and I think I'm in love! They're the best of both worlds! They have the cloth/waterproof outer cover but have a disposable/biodegradable liner that gets flushed in your toilet just like TP, tossed on your compost pile to add to nitrogen rich fertilizer or can be tossed on the trash! They bio degrade in 50-150 days vs the 500 years of a fully disposable diper. How can you go wrong with this? You dont spend the extra water and soap to wash them (you wash the liners like you do the rest of LO's clothes) and they can contribute to next years tomato crop (okay, that sounds a little gross). It's a simple as recycling your newspaper according to the website. AND - i'm happy to report - Target has them in the store so on the registry they go (once we actually register!) and diapers.com sells them as well so we can stock up any time we need to.

We'll likely have to use disposables while LO is a newborn as the gDiaper starts at 8lbs but that shouldn't be for long and heck, if this child is anything like his/her father, we may start out at 8lbs (or more - ouch!) so then we're saved! I'm sure we'll keep a disposable or two in the house in case of emergency but it makes me feel better that we're not contributing to increasing our landfills (or adding to the emissions when things are burned).