To Cloth Diaper or Not To Cloth Diaper?

We had a tough time deciding whether or not we would use cloth diapers. We thought they'd be expensive, that the laundry would be too much, that they'd smell or that I'd be grossed out by them, but through the debates, we kept coming back to the fact that they are just much better for the environment than disposables.  I know that some people argue this point, so I've asked Jon to write up some of the research he has done on the environmental impact of cloth versus disposables.  For now I'll just say that at the most basic level, I balanced the environmental impact of doing more laundry versus adding to the landfills and the oil used to make most disposables, and decided to go with doing the laundry.  At about $0.25 a piece for disposable, instead of piling up in the landfill, I have a little bit extra cash in my wallet. 

We've been using cloth diapers for almost six months now, and love them!  We wouldn't go back.  We've changed over 1,100 diapers and the vast majority have been reusable cloth diapers.  There are situations where we use disposables, but Jon has commented that that always makes him feel guilty.  One of my fellow mothers-of-twins (in her case, to be) asked about using cloth diapers with twins recently and my response to her inspired me to fix it up to be a blog post.

Disposables versus cloth? We used disposables on our twins and we use them on our baby now when we travel, when he has a very bad diaper rash or when we don't do the laundry soon enough.  I find the disposables are a teeny tiny bit easier than the cloth.  Mostly because with disposables I never have to match a liner with a cover (pocket diapers) and it's just two velcro/sticky tabs to attach (prefolds and covers can be a little tricky).   However, cloth diapers are not hard in any sense of the word.  Once in a while I'll fall back to a prefold and cover, but really, that's not often and not actually necessary.

Another drawback to cloth diapers is that they are bulkier, both under clothes and toting around in a diaper bag.  Besides, babies don't care if they need the next sized onsie.  On the plus side, I never have the dilemma of "what should I do with this dirty diaper?"  I always know what to do with it - stick it in my "wet bag" attached to my diaper bag. Given the environmental benefits of cloth, I'm happy to use them in most situations and happy to give advice and help.

I've been pleasantly surprised by how many of my friends and acquaintances are using cloth.  I had no idea until I started mentioning it on facebook and twitter.  If you're concerned you'll be the only one,  just ask around your social groups a little bit.  You might even find some hand-me-downs or loaners to get you started.

The multiple-children question: We're really only doing it on one, but I expect that it would be no harder on 2 or 3 children. The start up costs would be higher (but less than double), because you'd need more diapers, but you would have needed to buy more disposables anyhow.  From an environmental point of view, I always feel bad when I'm washing them because I never have a full washer load. If I was washing for 2 or 3 children I would still wash the diapers every 1-2 days,  but my washer would have more in it each time. There's really no folding, just a little stuffing or sorting - depending what you're using, so you're not adding the time consuming parts of doing laundry (folding and putting away).

How to get started?

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Keep Out The Drafts Quickly and Cheaply

Last night the wind was blowing here in Massachusetts, and it was blowing hard.  I'm working on a post about windows, and whether you should replace them, but right now, in January, I think most people want to know what they can do today to keep out the drafts.

My favorite quick solution is plastic film over the windows and rope caulk (usually "Mortite") for the big gaps. Both of these items can be purchased for a few dollars at your local hardware store, so you could have them this afternoon if you want them.   They also remove easily, so if you do not like them, you've only invested a few dollars and a little time.   These two items will give you some breathing room to think about more long-term and higher cost solutions,  like storm windows. These are also easy ways to get your children involved with weatherizing your house.

First, make sure that the latches are shut on your window.  These latches are not actually designed to keep a burglar out, but rather to keep your window firmly shut and prevent any drafts.  Do this first, because after you put on the Mortite and plastic film, you won't be able to move the window again until you take them back off at the end of the season.

Then, figure out where the drafts are.   These products are designed to help with the big drafts, the ones that are annoying you and easy to find.   They are for the windows that rattle, the gaps you can see or where you feel a light breeze on a windy day.  

Next, take your Mortite (pictured) and press it into the big gaps.   These will likely be the places where your window moves, and after putting this on, you won't be able to open or shut your windows anymore.  Using Mortite is like using clay (or playdough), only it will never harden.  At the end of the season you can just pull it off and throw it away or save it for next year.  We had our children put it on and take it off when they were just 4 years-old.

Next, get out your window film.  EFI has a great explanation of how to put it on,  but basically you just put your double stick tape around your window, then press on the plastic film, and then use a hair dryer to shrink it tight and keep out the drafts.  If after you've put it up it billows in the window, you have learned two things 1. you really needed it and 2. Put it up tighter next year.  At 4 years-old, we let our children hold the hairdryer to shrink the film.

If you live in an apartment, these are probably your long term solutions, although you could look at weather stripping and caulking as well.  However, if you are a homeowner (or landlord), while these solutions are very helpful, you should consider interior or exterior storm windows as a longer term solution.  We will discuss those, repairing old windows and replacing vinyl windows in other posts.

Happy Greening!
Alicia

p.s. if it is easier to order it online or your local hardware doesn't have a good selection, check out EFI.org, our favorite online vendor for energy saving products. Browse to the Air Sealing/Insulation section where you will find the rope caulk under Windows Air Sealing and the window film under Window Storm/Panels.

Stand with Haiti

With all the news about Haiti, we wanted to share with you our personal information about one of the groups already on the ground in Haiti and encourage you to donate there.

Partners in Health has been working to help the people of Haiti for nearly 25 years.  Their mission is to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care.

Partners In Health (PIH) works to bring modern medical care to poor communities in nine countries around the world. The work of PIH has three goals: to care for our patients, to alleviate the root causes of disease in their communities, and to share lessons learned around the world.

With the devestating earthquake near Port-au-Prince, the people of Haiti desperately need help and PIH can do even more with our support.  Please donate now.

I personally know some of the people at PIH.org and truly believe in and support their mission and work. I ask you to consider donating to PIH to support their work in Haiti.

Thank you,
Jonathan

Good for the Environment and Your Budget: Buying in Bulk

My mom likes to tell me that my pantry is so full I should stop shopping for the next year and just eat what we have. However, we do rotate through our bulk food, I volunteer with Red Cross Disaster Services so I feel like I should be prepared, and I know that buying in bulk is good for the environment.

Larger packages means less material is used to hold an equivalent amount of food (or underpants or toy cars or - you get the idea).   Picture individual serving packs of cereal versus a large box of cereal and you can quickly see what I mean by less packaging for the same amount of product.   The box for this single serve portion of cereal makes up 30% of the total weight, whereas the bulk version's packaging is only 17% of the total weight (that's like saving half the cardboard, not to mention the energy saved in shipping less).  This holds true for a medium box versus a large box as well, but it's easier to see the difference when you look at single-serving versus a warehouse-store sized box.

If you buy more at one time you don't have to go to the store as often, saving gas and time!  I understand that many people go to the grocery store every week.   I rarely go more often than every other week.  I typically go to the warehouse store (BJ's or Costco near us) every 3-4 weeks and I go to the grocery store about every 3-4 weeks as well, usually resulting in a shopping trip every other week.

Buying in bulk usually saves money as well.  Typically, pound for pound or ounce for ounce products bought in bulk are cheaper than when bought in smaller quantities.  It's easy to see this at the grocery store, most stores in our area list the per pound or per quart price of food as well as the price of the container.  As a general rule, larger quantities are less expensive per serving.

One thing to be careful about is to not buy more than you can use before it goes bad.   If you buy in bulk, but you throw away stuff, then you are wasting and not benefiting from the savings.  We have an Energy Star chest freezer for storing warehouse-store quantities of frozen foods.  We also have a family of 5, so we eat enough food to make this worthwhile.

You can also buy in bulk from Amazon.com, and with their automatic reorder service you don't forget to buy more, and they give 15% off for having a standing order.   One might argue that shipping the items is not great for the environment, but mail trucks are up and down most streets almost every day so they are spending that carbon anyhow.  Also, they have fully optimized their routes, so they are fairly efficient in their carbon use and you don't have to use the fuel to go to the store. Amazon and other on-line companies also opens up the door to products you might not be able to get locally.   For example, we get our recycled, Seventh Generation paper towels and toilet paper delivered in bulk from Amazon twice a year.  It's cheaper when you're on a subscription service and we weren't able to get these items in bulk locally.

Check out what warehouse stores are near you and see if they have a free trial pass so you can see if it works for you.  Some stores to check include BJ's, Costco and Sam's Club (or Makro in Europe). Whenever you buy things, keep an eye out for the largest packages to see if they will save you packaging, time and money.

Happy Greening,
Alicia

The Shorty Awards

What you ask are the Shorty Awards? These are awards for the Twitter Community. They are not done by twitter.com but rather a company called SawHorse Media. The idea is that twitter users nominate and vote for the best producers of short content on Twitter.

How do you vote? Simply tweet the following sentence: I nominate @TwitterUser for a Shorty Award in #blogger because...

For example, you could tweet: "I nominate @grnlifestyle for a Shorty Award in #green because they make it easy for people to go green."

Anyone with a public twitter account can tweet a nomination, and then when the voting begins in February, anyone (with a public twitter account) can tweet their vote for one of the top five candidates in each category. Why a public account? They count the votes by searching the #blogger hashtag and if you protect your tweets so only your approved followers can read them, then they can't count your vote.

This year is the second annual Shorty Awards and they have 27 official categories and an unlimited number of crowd-sourced categories. Currently "green" is a crowd-sourced category, but one of the most popular ones.

We think it would be great to see "green" turned into one of the official categories, to show how important it is to the on-line population. Therefore, we are encouraging everyone to vote for someone in this category. Of course, we'd like you to vote for us, but if you'd rather vote for someone else, at least vote, to show your support for the category.

Right now @grnlifestyle is #10 in the green category, and we'd love to see that move up higher!

Another thing we're voting for is @oneclimate in the news category for their awesome live coverage of the Copenhagen talks:
I nominate @oneclimate for a Shorty Award in #news because of their unbiased, informative #COP15 coverage

Let us know who you're voting for in what category, and maybe we'll vote for them too!  If you like what we've been sharing, nominate/vote @grnlifestyle in the #green category because insert your favorite green reason.


Happy Greening!
Alicia

More Green Stuff from CES 2010

Following up my earlier post about Shades of Green from CES, here is a look at some more thing I noticed.  Thanks to Engadget and TreeHugger for their coverage.

• Smart Grid Home Controller
  This nifty device bridges Zigbee power meter and Z-Wave home automation.  This is totally for the geek, but I do love to see more devices like this that provide the ability to monitor and log energy use and then do something automatically about it to manage it.
  
• New dimmer technology works with old CFLs
  I wonder how well this work.  This is someting I've got to see to believe.  Note it only works with lamps and who wants the dimmer switch to be at the plug.  I wonder if there is a flicker since it is hard to tell from the video and limited information from the freelux website.
• More solar chargers for gadgets
  
  
  
  
  
  The options keep growing for solar powering your mobile devices like iPods, cell phones, eBook readers and DVD players.  I think the FreeLoader Pro could possibly satisfy my power hungry iPhone.
  
  
  
  
  
• And even more solar charges
  
  
  
  
  (Image from TreeHugger)
  
  I like this one because it also doubles as a flash light.  This year should bring some interesting options for solar chargers.  Keep in mind many of these need something like 24 hours of direct sunlight (aka 3+ days) to fully charge up, so they may not be able to provide the daily charging needed for an iPhone or Droid.
  
  
  
  
  
• Martin LaMonica hosts panel discussion about Greening Electronics
  Our fellow Energy Smackdown competitor Martin LaMonica led the conversation that included things like energy efficient TVs, eRecycling, sustainable manufacturing and embodied energy. While I'm not in the market for a new TV at the moment, I do hope that by the time I am, more information will be available for energy usage comparisons.
• A device that "eliminates" vampire power
  I'm not sure I believe this will actually work.  How does it know if something is a vampire load?  What does it do for DVRs?  How about Cable/Satellite Boxes that maintain scheduling information?  Unfortunately, there is not much any details available yet, though it does have the right idea in terms of trying to be very simple to use and not requiring extensive setup. 
  
• Pull cord YoGen Charger
  Right idea, but not clear to me that it is worth it and how much power can you realistically generate.  I know the OLPC folks went away from the original human power dreams when they realized that the kids would need a lot more calories in their diet each day to power their XO laptops.  Then again, in the US, perhaps we need to burn a few more calories.  I notice they have a fly wheel in there, which totally makes sense to provide steady power from multiple pulls.
  
  
• Solar iPhone Skin isn't so useful
  I'm starting to come to the realization that it will take a lot of solar power to charge my power hungry iPhone.  The tiny surface area on this device is no where near big enough to charge the phone and who is going to leave their phone sitting in the sun during the day, that's when I use it most.

I am glad to see so many different and exciting green technologies coming out at the Consumer Electronics Show this year.  I am also happy with the attention being paid to making the electronics more sustainable, though there is plenty of greenwashing out there so be careful buying any "green" gadget.

Happy Greening!
Jon

Shades of Green from Consumer Electronics Show 2010

In flipping through the Endgadget coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2010 in Las Vegas this week, I noticed a few green products that are worth mentioning.  There are way too many ebook readers and LED & OLED based HDTVs so I won't even begin to discuss those, but here are some more interesting things that caught my eye:

• Energizer solar power and other rechargeable products 
  Energizer had many new power solutions on display.  I wish there was a picture of the hybrid flashlight mentioned, but I can imagine what that looks like.  I also like the solar charging station.  This is similar to the Solio charger that I am trying to use to take my iPhone off the grid, but the Energizer solution looks to have a slightly larger PV panel and therefore may meet the power needs of my iPhone.
• Powermat wireless charging products
  Wireless power charging mats is really exciting technology.   The question I have not seen addressed to my satisfaction is how efficient are these devices when compared to your standard modern switching power supply.  These will be interesting to watch and if they can eliminate the need for numerous different power adapters in a home, then I may not mind that they are not as efficient as current wired technology.
• HP debuts eco-friendly displays
  HP's new displays are low energy and mercury free. Display technology has gotten significantly more environmentally friendly in recent years, both in their energy use and in their composition.   LED displays and OLED are very energy efficient and seem to be the direction that the technology is going. Hopefully vendors will start including power consumption as a standard specification going forward. I hope the display technology continues to improve in quality and efficiency. 
• Oregon Scientific energy monitors
  I am a big fan of monitoring energy consumption.  The eight unit and single unit appliance manager models appear to monitor electricity consumption at the plug.  I would like to know how much detail these have and if they offer the same features as the basic kill-a-watt meter that readers know I love.  Not having to read the kill-a-watt meter upside down and behind the desk would be cool.  Besides the cumulative power consumption, it does not appear to do any logging like the TED.  I expect this is a good tool for the less technically inclined folks that want to understand their electricity usage more.
  
• Marvell Plug Computer 3.0 with WiFi, Bluetooth and 2 GHz Amada chip
  These plug computers are mini-display-less linux servers the size of a power adapter.  I've been following them for a couple years now as low energy PCs that can be intergrated into a home energy monitoring and/or management system.  I hope to see some great home grown Smart Grid opportunities based on similar devices in the next year.
• First Chevy Volt battery rolls off the assembly line
  Unfortunately, there is no production line for the vehicles that use these batteries. We're getting closer to mainstream plugin hybrid vehicles being available, but alas we're not there yet.
  

More to come as the show continues for the next few days and I follow it through Endgadget.

Happy Greening!
Jon

1 Flush, 2 Flush, How to Make a Dual Flush

Toilets typically consume 27% of household water usage according to the EPA.  For an average family of four that's 75 gallons of water being flushed down the drain per day, literally.  The best thing to do for the environment is to replace older toilets (those manufactured before 1993), which use 3.5-7 gallons per flush (gpf), with modern WaterSense (the H20 equivalent of EnergyStar) toilets that use 1.6 gpf.  An even better choice is the dual flush toilets that use only 0.8 gpf for #1 and 1.6 for #2.  Replacing a toilet isn't always practical once you factor in the cost of  the toilet and hiring a plumber. Here is how we turned a regular toilet into a water saving dual-flush toilet in just about 30 minutes.

Our parents have older 1989 high volume toilets in their house that use about 5 gallons per flush (gpf).  While the long term solution should be to replace these toilets with modern dual flush WaterSense toilets at 0.8/1.6 gpf like the American Standard Dual Flush model pictured, at $300 each plus labor, that was not in the budget.  For less than 1/10th of that, we gave them a dual-flush conversion kit for Christmas and included installation as part of the gift.  For those that find the if it is yellow, let it mellow method too high on the ick factor, this is a great alternative and it can be done in addition.

We chose the most frequently used toilet in the house for converting since it would save the most water.  The installation went smoothly and took about 30 minutes from start to finish.  We estimate that for every flush they are saving 2-3 gallons of water.  It took a bit of adjusting to ensure it actually flushed for the partial flush, but once adjusted it has been working great.  Now instead of the handle, they have a push button - one drop for #1 and two drops for #2.  They are so happy with this that they've asked us to convert the remaining two toilets in the house the next time we visit. Included at the end of this post are the steps that I went through to give you a better sense of how involved the installation is so you can gauge if they're up for doing it yourself.

So if you are not interested in spending $300+ per toilet replacing them, but still want to save water with modern dual flush technology, consider getting a conversion kit like the HydroRight Drop-in Dual Flush Converter.  As we always recommend, before spending money to convert all of the toilets in your house, buy one and see if it works for the style toilet you have and that you are happy with the solution before investing in the entire upgrade.

Happy Greening,
Jon

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