:: oh yeah! ::

how could i have forgotten to tell you? how!? my new column on scoutie girl debuted last thursday, and today featured the second installment. pop on over and read them - you'll find me writing (each thursday morning) in a slightly less personal voice, but i think you'll see it's still the same old me you've grown to love.

ahem.

:: eco weakness ::

i'm being interviewed by liz from cosa verde (i'll post when it goes live so you can run on over there and read it) and so i've got eco-friendliness on the brain right now. all that thinking brought up a strange question:

what's my eco-weakness?

for sure mine's the peanut butter jar. yes, it's recyclable. yes, it's empty. yes, i could wash it and recycle it. but i hate the smell of wet peanut butter. so i throw it away. i recycle every other bit of stuff that's allowed in the curbside recycling bin. i save electronics for the town's electronic recycling day. i stockpile bottles and cans and return them to the grocery store when there are just enough to fill up my entire station wagon. but the peanut butter jar gets tossed.

with the amount of water it takes to properly clean a peanut butter jar i might actually be doing the more ecologically responsible thing anyway. but that's an issue for someone else to sort out.

but now i'm curious:

what's your eco-weakness?

:: Changing The World One "Gift" At A Time ::

Why, why, do things that seem so good in theory have to go so very, very wrong? I signed us up for the Freecycle Columbus Yahoo group last week thinking, yes, how good of me, joining Freecycle and being a good little recycler/trader. And oh, won’t it be so neat when someone gives me a gorgeous antique wooden table – not the ornate kind but the very plain kind that looks like a slab of wood and four square sticks – so that I can get hubby to stop talking about the one he found at Meijer (which is, by the way, as bad as buying your table from Kmart if you don’t know what Meijer is – the table may look pretty in the store but you just know that the one you get home isn’t going to go together right and it’s going to have some weird defect and the faux wood stain that looks so lovely and dark in the store is going to look all red and streaky in your house).

So I’m shining my halo when my first email arrives, even though I specifically told Freecycle Columbus that I didn’t want emails, I just wanted to go to the website to read the messages, and I think, yes, I’m so smart and such a good person and everyone should want to be like me. Isn’t Freecycle so wonderful?

And then some more emails come.

And some more.

Oh. my. god.

363 emails in the last not-quite-five days. Emails to offer items and then emails when said items are taken. Emails in search of items and, yup, that’s right, emails to let everyone know that the desired item has been procured.

And that gorgeous antique wooden table, the kind that looks like kids have been drawing and doing projects and eating warm, steamy soup at it for decades? Not yet. Not even close. Instead, I’ve seen emails regarding broken hot tubs (fiberglass, has a leak, we don’t know where and don’t care to look), broken garage door openers (makes a clicking noise and won’t lift the door), a box of fabric scraps (this one has potential, actually, except based on the lady’s other offerings I suspect this may be a box of, like, purple velour or something equally heinous), a working dryer with a fake Christmas tree (must take both!), an Old Navy orange bubble coat that has no rips or tears but does need a “real good cleaning,” a brown canopy without instructions (brown? really?), 150 paper shopping bags (ooh, over here! pick me!), and an “antique heavy iron lamp base with birds lampshade” that “would need rewiring.” Oh, and the “lamp shade has water staining on one side, but is pretty nifty.”

Turns out, Freecycle is a place for people to throw away their old, broken, junk. Sure, there were boxes of baby clothes and some books and software titles (“Planning Your Divorce,” I shit you not), but about 90 percent of the offers I’ve seen so far have included the words “broken” or “needs work” or “some stains.” So of course now I don’t even trust the other ten percent who I suspect just actually forgot to mention “has vomit on it, but this will probably come out” or “electrocuted my gramps, so we don’t want it anymore.”

Here’s the worst part. All that crap gets taken. I’m hoping the takers are sociology Ph.D. students working on dissertations because otherwise all I can say is damn, people, stop collecting other people’s crap. I’m all for passing stuff along and all but holy hell.

Damn halo. Must have been picking up interference from the devil himself.

:: Sucks Hormone-Laden Eggs ::

A few weeks ago I wrote about what a thoughtless consumer I am. I’d link to the post but (a) I’m kinda lazy right now and (b) you can find it by searching for “chart” in the search box to the right if you just really really need to read that post.

Here’s the relevant bit right here:

I need to make some changes. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to learn to be a better consumer. […] I’m going to be more thoughtful. I’m going to research my options. I’m going to learn about buying local foods. I’m going to make gifts and give books that I buy directly from small publishers or that I get at the really cool independent bookstore downtown. I’m going to give cloth diapers another shot. (Actually, we tried Evan’s two Fuzzi Bunz today and he has finally grown into them and they worked great — except for a big leak after a nap, but I could get used to changing them more frequently.) I’m going to stop pretending that making good choices is something only rich people can do.

If you’ve ever read my journals, which you better not have ever done because come on people that’s my journal and by the way what are you doing in my bedroom, you know that this reeks of me. It reeks of Gee I Need To Change My Life In a Drastic Way and I Need To Do It Now.

So OK. I’m a bit overzealous sometimes. And yet, there’s something real here. Sometimes going way overboard and then looking at the results yields self-knowledge.

A progress report should tell the tale…

Thinking More Before I Shop: Very Good
Shopping Independent Stores: Quite Good
Actually Buying at Independent Stores: Not As Good But Better Than Before

I haven’t been to Target since I wrote that post. Twenty-five days without stepping foot in Target. My mom, if she’s reading this, just gasped. But I don’t miss it. I haven’t needed anything and so I haven’t gone. Easy. Boring, at times, but easy.

I have also made a very concerted effort to shop at local, independent shops. I visited the indie bookstore, took Evan to the local toy store to shop for a birthday present for a small friend, and patronized the local yarn shop. The latter was cool, actually, because in the back there were all these ladies sitting around a table knitting. Between the woman who worked there and these women, I had everything I needed in the way of advice and suggestions. And they doted on Evan, which of course was a bonus. The best part about going there, though, was that they had so much more to choose from. I had cashmere at my fingertips, something I’ve never even seen at JoAnn Fabrics, which is where I’d usually get my yarn.

Buying Locally-grown Food: Needs But Probably Won’t Get Improvement

Turns out, even though I know know know that there are really excellent reasons for buying locally-grown produce and meat and all, I really just don’t care enough about this. I like eating nectarines and strawberries in winter, and I’m just not really going to drive 15 miles to some farm north of here to buy eggs and chickens. I’ve never actually even cooked chicken (this falls in the Have Hubby Do It arena), and frankly the idea of buying one whole freaks me out. Knowing where it comes from and saving the planet from refrigerated-truck carbon emissions just apparently isn’t enough to convince me that driving around with a whole dead chicken in my trunk is a good idea.

Buying Organic: Contentedly Sucks Non-Organic, Hormone-Laden Eggs (Or Needs Improvement But Come On, Really?)

Again, here my knowledge and my values come into conflict. I know that buying organic is a good thing and I am convinced that pesticides from our food are probably not good for us. Probably there’s some pesticide leaching through my membranes right this very minute, mutating my genes and cells. This bothers me on some level, of course. And if it were a case of immediate threat or harm – like in the case of GHB-laced kid toys – then I’d be singing a different tune. But honestly, while I believe that pesticides (and BPA, for that matter) are probably harming us, I also believe that we all need to die of something and if dying from 80 years of pesticide exposure is it, then whatever. I’ve made it this long with no symptoms, right?

Using Cloth Diapers: Slight Improvement Shown; Potential For Further Improvement

I’ve started using Evan’s cloth diapers more, although since we have only two that fit him, that’s almost a moot point. At best I can cut out two disposables a day, if I wash the two cloth ones every night, but then we’re getting into water consumption and other factors that I don’t fully understand, and so I use them every time I do laundry and figure that a little is better than nothing. I hope to buy some more and by the time baby number two comes around (oh, I mean if and when baby number two comes around of course – no need to startle anyone) we’ll be better informed about how to do cloth.

Making Gifts / Buying Handmade: Shows Excellent Progress

I have many projects in the works that I can’t tell you about because their recipients read this blog. How nice of them and how boring for the rest of you. But trust me: they’re good. I also made my Christmas list using Etsy, which is, I think, one of the best things about the Internet. In fact, you should go there now. Find something pretty. Buy it.

Overall Assessment:

Actually cares about buying from the folks who make things and folks who own their own shops. Fully able to restrict mindless spending.

Only half-cares about reducing waste (particularly in the form of disposable diapers).

Doesn't give even half a hoot about buying local or organic food and probably won't ever give even a tiny fraction of a hoot.

Transformed? No, not really. More mindful, though? Yup. Aware of values? Definitely.

The best thing to come out of this so far has been the new-found understanding of what I believe about things like where and how I spend my money (and my efforts). I have been barraged with buzzwords like "Buy Local" and "Go Organic" but haven't ever really given much thought to whether I understand the terms and am willing to commit to the lifestyle.

I also didn't realize before how important going indie was to me. Brian challenged me in the car one day about this, saying something about how all businesses, even the biggest ones, started out as local businesses. He also pointed out that sometimes, the bigger, national (or supranational) chain stores have benefits: they may provide health insurance to employees who might not get health insurance from independent store owners; they provide consumers with a certain level of confidence that they can go to any Starbucks, let's say, and know what they're getting; they can provide deeper discounts on things like kitty litter and hand soap and garbage bags.

I have to admit, I felt stuck at first. I felt in my gut that I wanted to defend my new-found desire to shop indie stores and to buy handmade whenever possible, but I had no reasons to back this up. Unwilling to lose to my devil's advocate husband, I sat awhile and thought. And thought. And then I started in with my ideas. And it turns out, I convinced myself:

1. I believe in ownership. I really like the idea that there are people out there who own the businesses that they run. I wish that more of us could own something big, could know what it means to be in charge, to be the one making the decisions. More indie stores means more owners. More revenue for indie stores means possibly more indie stores.


2. I believe in making things with my hands, and in supporting other people who make things with their hands. It's hard to make a living doing this and I want to support people who are trying.


3. I believe in variety and in creativity. I can buy an inexpensive necklace at Target and see three people wearing it within a week, or I can buy an inexpensive necklace from someone on Etsy and have something that no one else has. When we start to think outside of the Which Big Store Is Closest And How Much Can I Get There box, we start to discover all kinds of neat things that we never would have found otherwise. Things we won't see on every kid in the supermarket or in every garage. Have you seen these, for example? Or these?

:: A Letter9 First: Glass Bottle Give-Away ::

In honor of Evan's four-month birthday, I'm giving stuff away!  It's like birthday presents, but for *you* instead of us.  Read on to learn more... 

Move Over SIDS, Bisphenol-A Is The New Big Fear

The new big thing for parents of infants to worry about is Bisphenol-A, an industrial chemical first synthesized in 1905 that is used primarily to make polycarbonate plastic. This plastic, which provides optical clarity, shatter-resistance, and high-heat resistance, is used in eyeglass lenses, medical equipment, 5-gallon water bottles, digital media (e.g. CDs and DVDs), cell phones, consumer electronics, computers and other business equipment, electrical equipment, household appliances, safety shields, construction glazing, sports safety equipment, and automobiles. And yes, baby bottles.

Because the ester bonds in these BPA-based polymers are subject to hydrolysis, leaching of BPA has led to widespread human exposure. This means that when we use, wash, sterilize, or heat polycarbonate plastic, small amounts of BPA seep out.

When my sister-in-law first alerted Brian and I to the supposed Evils of BPA right before Evan was born, my first inclination was to think she was worrying about nothing. I figured this was the latest trend in a long line of fear-based trends. When she sent us a set of BPA-free baby bottles, I suspected that this was a fear driven more by someone's desire to make money off of overprotective parents than it was driven by facts. We tried the BPA-free plastic baby bottles, hated them, and promptly returned to using our BPA-laden ones.

And then our plastic bottles started cracking. I contacted Evenflo about this and they offered to replace them. I didn't really want the same bottles since all ten of the ones we owned, which were bought at different times and at different stores, had cracked. So looking over my options I saw that Evenflo also sells glass bottles. Since they were bigger than the ones we had and since Evan was on the verge of needing bigger bottles anyway, I told the Evenflo rep that we wanted those.

At the same time, more interested now in BPA because all our bottles had cracked, I did some research.

Trying to determine the risks associated with the use of products containing Bisphenol-A (BPA) is an object lesson in the necessity of understanding where information comes from and who funds it. For example, a very fascinating and reliable-seeming website, www.bisphenol-A.org, provides an extensive archive of information and fact sheets relating to Bisphenol-A. This website reports that BPA provides no significant risk and it cites studies conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Association (the FDA), the U.K. Ministry of Agriculture, the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry, and the Japanese National Institute of Health Sciences. The website appears authoritative and the use of the .org extension in the web address suggests that you're looking at the website of an independent, probably non-profit organization.

Some research reveals that the site is actually maintained by the American Chemistry Council, which "represents the companies that make the products that make modern life possible." In other words, this website is run by the folks who make and sell products containing BPA, folks who have a strongly vested interest in keeping you in polycarbonate plastics.

More interesting to me than bisphenol-A.org is a study published in 2005 in Environmental Health Perspectives and currently available at the National Institutes of Health website.

This article, written by Frederick S. vom Saal (of the Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri) and Claude Hughes (of the Department of Medical and Scientific Services, Quintiles, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and the Department of Biology, East Carolina University), provides an extensive review of scientific literature on the effects of Bisphenol A. In other words, the authors do not conduct their own research but provide an analysis of 115 already-published studies on the effects of low doses of Bisphenol-A.

The authors find the following:

A recent report prepared by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and funded by the American Plastics Council concluded that evidence for low-dose effects of BPA is weak on the basis of a review of only 19 studies; the report was issued after a delay of 2.5 years. A current comprehensive review of the literature reveals that the opposite is true. As of December 2004, there were 115 published in vivo studies concerning low-dose effects of BPA, and 94 of these report significant effects. In 31 publications with vertebrate and invertebrate animals, significant effects occurred below the predicted "safe" or reference dose of 50 μg/kg/day BPA. An estrogenic mode of action of BPA is confirmed by in vitro experiments, which describe disruption of cell function at 10-12 M or 0.23 ppt. Nonetheless, chemical manufacturers continue to discount these published findings because no industry-funded studies have reported significant effects of low doses of BPA, although > 90% of government-funded studies have reported significant effects.

[...] We propose that a new risk assessment for BPA is needed based on a) the extensive new literature reporting adverse effects in animals at doses below the current reference dose; b) the high rate of leaching of BPA from food and beverage containers, leading to widespread human exposure; c) reports that the median BPA level in human blood and tissues, including in human fetal blood, is higher than the level that causes adverse effects in mice; and d) recent epidemiologic evidence that BPA is related to disease in women.

Based on their literature review, vom Saal and Hughes argue that exposure to low doses of BPA "has been related to adverse effects in a large number of recently published studies." They report that low-level exposure to BPA can lead to "estrogenic activity" (meaning the chemical acts lie estrogen, having potentially feminizing effects), disrupted thyroid hormone activity, the proliferation of human prostate cancer cells, and blocked testosterone synthesis.

Despite this literature review, I'm still not 100% converted to the BPA is Evil cause. Or rather, I think BPA probably is bad but I'm not sure that it's worse than all the other things out there that are going to kill us anyway and I'm not sure that avoiding it or not avoiding it is going to make a discernible difference in my own life or the life (lives) of my child(ren). We all have to die somehow and removing all possible environmental threats isn't really going to change that. Worse, living a life that does try to eliminate all possible environmental threats seems exhausting and overly stressful. I don't want to be the mother who forgets to have fun because she's worrying about too many things at once.

Of course that said, I have always been wary of the proliferation of plastic in our contemporary lives. It was, like, just barely invented and we, like, use it all over the place and for every possible application. We put it in these things called microwaves which also seem, um, scary. How can bad things not be leaching out into our homes and our bodies?

Given this literature review, I probably owe my sister-in-law an apology (although I never actually let on that I thought she was being silly). Given this literature review, I am definitely glad I chose glass bottles when given the opportunity. I'm also frustrated because in the weeks since I received my glass nursers, I discovered that they're available (at the same price as the plastic ones) with all the other baby bottles at Babies R Us and I just never noticed. Me, the girl who buys mayo in the smallest jars possible because they're the only ones that come in glass instead of plastic (oh yeah, and because mayo is gross). Me, who gets cans of soda instead of plastic even when it costs four times as much. It's like when I shop for Evan some part of my brain shuts off and I just get what everyone around me is getting. I just didn't even look.

At any rate, because I suspect that others might also have had their bottle blinders on when perusing the rows and rows of baby bottles at their baby store of choice, and because I'm glad I did all this research on BPA, and because I love my glass bottles so much (they come out of the dishwasher so shiny), and (let's be honest) because Evenflo sent me extras to cover the cost of me returning the plastic ones that were all cracked, I'm giving some away.

Yup, you heard me right: I'm giving away glass baby bottles.

Leave a comment to this post below by midnight on Monday, October 29th and I will choose a random winner on Tuesday who will receive three Evenflo glass nursers and a homemade burpcloth (just for fun). Make sure to provide a valid email address so that I can contact you if you win.

:: Learning to Make Better Choices, One Chart at a Time ::

Well, folks, I say why do something if you're not really going to do it. Right? Right. So I'm introducing more changes. BIG changes. LIFE changes. Because having a baby and returning to work and moving the blog and putting the house on the market and taking it back off the market aren't enough. I crave more.

But we'll get to that later. First let's talk about my closet.

Last week, I ransacked it. I caught about ten minutes of Tim Gunn's Guide to Style, and watching them pare this woman's wardrobe down to about six items, I got all fired up. I quit watching as soon as I heard Tim Gunn utter the phrase, "Grooming should be a priority" and hightailed it up to the bedroom for some serious time with my clothes.

If you'd asked me then, I'd have told you that I needed to do some major shopping, that nothing fit, etc. Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong. What I realized two naps, fifty-four empty hangers, and three full to-be-donated garbage bags later was that I really just had too much stuff. I realized that all I still needed to buy were two pairs of jeans (I own five pairs of jeans, two pairs of which are now too big and three pairs of which are still too small), a few white long sleeve shirts for wearing under wool sweaters (I trashed all the ones I had because they were not even close to looking white anymore), and two new bras (ditto above re: jeans). I had all the tees, shirts, and sweaters I need. I had all the socks and underwear. It was all there, I just couldn't see it.

As a teenager, and even through college, I was something of a minimalist. My closets were never full, I always only had one coat at a time, didn't carry a purse. Since I moved to Ohio, though, and started teaching, and lost some weight, and started liking clothes more and more, I've been somewhat proud of my accumulating collection of, well, stuff on hangers.

But all that stuff on hangers ever really did for me was make it harder to see what I had.

So I was brutal: I got rid of all those things that I own that I've never liked but about which I have said "I might like it" or "I might need it one day"; I got rid of everything that was stained; I got rid of all the dresses I have from two summers ago that were just slightly too small and thus more than slightly uncomfortable.

In all, I filled three large garbage bags with clothing and shoes to donate. I didn't even realize I owned so much stuff. I got rid of 75% of my wardrobe, I'd guess, and still have plenty to wear each day.

And it felt so good.

So then last night, we got a gift in the mail from our very good friends in Baltimore. Our friends who own the bugaboo stroller and have his suits and shirts tailor-made by a guy from China but who also use only cloth diapers, wear organic clothing or shop at thrift stores, and use earth-friendly cleaning supplies. Our friends who give wine as a Christmas gift and who made me a small pin that says, "Ph.D. MOM" and one for Brian that said "New Dad." They're thoughtful in every sense of the word -- they think about how they spend their money, how they spend their time, where their food comes from.

They're the posterfamily for yuppie/hippie living. They're the folks you look at and think, yes, I'd be more earth-conscious if I had as much money as they do. Which, of course, is exactly what I said to Brian last night when their gift arrived.

And for the first time ever it hit me what a stupid thing that is to say. Being conscious consumers, thoughtful inhabitants of the earth, doesn't have to be something you spend big on. And furthermore, by not spending on thoughtless things, you free up more money to spend on thoughtful ones even if they do cost more money.

So I got to poking around. I was curious about our spending habits. I track our budget like a hawk, reconciling our accounts at the end of each month and comparing our actual spending to our budgeted spending. I do this because while we have everything we need and want, money is tight for us and we have to make choices. We have to plan. We live within our means without any debt (other than student loans), but we have to work hard to do so.

But I've never tracked where we spend our money.

So I logged onto our online checking info and started digging. Then I played awhile in Excel and here's what I found:



In the last year, only .09% (that's 9/1000th) of our spending went to independent sellers -- artists, booksellers, movie theatres, etc. Fully 18.05% went to chain stores. We spent nearly $4000 in the last year at Target alone.

Nearly 15% of our spending goes to groceries, but none of this is local -- not the food, not the sellers. Nor do we buy organic except in extremely rare cases. We didn't spend one dime at a farmer's market in the last 12 months except for this weekend at the pumpkin patch.

This chart only includes checking -- it leaves out any charges made to our credit card, which we use for all travel and for anything we order online. It's too much work to go through all the statements for that because I'd have to do it by hand -- Chase online doesn't have the cool payee reports that my bank provides. It also doesn't say anything about where our cash, which isn't much since we're both addicted to the check card, goes.

But still. It's eye-opening. It made me realize how thoughtless I am about how and where I spend my money. Do we really need to spend an average of $76 a week at Target, particularly when we spend an average of less than $1 a week buying locally or from independent sellers? Did we really not make one single charitable donation this year? We've been concerned about our budget since we didn't know exactly how having a baby would affect things -- we budgeted more money but didn't know if we'd budgeted enough. So we didn't want to give any money away in case we might have to resort to borrowing some money from our parents or using the credit cards at the end of the year if things get too tight. But seriously? That's a really crappy excuse.

Oh yeah. Then there's Christmas. Last year we spent $885 on Christmas gifts. The year before we spent more than a thousand. And there weren't even any kids to buy for.

I am astounded. I literally couldn't sleep last night. I need to make some changes.

So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to learn to be a better consumer. I'm not saying I'm going to be a "perfect" consumer. I'm still going to buy my coffee beans from Starbucks because we like them best and because we both worked for them for years and they gave us health insurance and because they grind the beans for our espresso machine meaning we don't have to buy a lot of lattes and cappuccinos.

I'm going to be more thoughtful. I'm going to research my options. I'm going to learn about buying local foods. I'm going to make gifts and give books that I buy directly from small publishers or that I get at the really cool independent bookstore downtown. I'm going to give cloth diapers another shot. (Actually, we tried Evan's two Fuzzi Bunz today and he has finally grown into them and they worked great -- except for a big leak after a nap, but I could get used to changing them more frequently.) I'm going to stop pretending that making good choices is something only rich people can do.

And I'm going to blog about all of it so that you can join me if you want to. And leave me ideas and suggestions!

*****

Please note: the cellular bill shown above is actually for me, Brian, my mom, and my sister. Brian and I only pay half that. No need to comment on how we're probably getting a totally crappy deal. : )

:: Cloth Versus Disposable Or, Will My Baby Be Eating Lunchables? ::

Becoming a parent has made me soft. It’s made me ignore, at least temporarily, the things I used to strive for in my pre-baby life. Like writing my dissertation, sleeping nine hours a night, finishing a thought.

It has made me ignore my commitment to doing what I think is best for this great green earth and all the great green people on it. And the non-green ones, too. For example:

• It has made me take longer, hotter showers (I deserve it, I say).


• It has made me leave the air conditioning on for the sake of the baby (he needs a consistent temperature, I tell myself) when it would be perfectly bearable without it and when I never would have turned it on before.


• It has made me keep a nightlight on in the baby’s room even during the day because it’s hard to reach to turn off, particularly when holding said baby.


• It has made me use paper plates, but just sometimes.


• It has made me run the dishwasher each night even though it’s only half full (must sanitize baby bottles, of course).


• It has made me bottle feed instead of breast (this one could not be helped).


• But worst of all: it has made me use disposable diapers instead of cotton.

Not that using cotton diapers is so clearly better than using disposable. Before we made our decision to use cloth we did a lot of research. While cloth diaper advocates insist that using cloth is no-questions-about-it better for the earth, non-interested parties have questions. What about water waste? Detergent use? The cost (in money and resources) of washing cloth diapers in hot water? If you can’t line dry them, which we can’t, what about running the dryer long enough to get those absorbent little buggers completely dry? The ILEA comes down on the question by suggesting that the best answer depends on your community’s situation. Disposables, they argue, use 29% less energy over their lifecycle than do cloth diapers (if home laundered, which is the only option here in Columbus and in most of the country since diaper services have gone by the wayside) but occupy twice as much landfill space.

In the end, though, we still decided that cloth would be the better route for us. We didn’t like the idea of putting all that additional plastic and other synthetic material into the landfills. Even more than that, we didn’t like the idea of introducing all that untreated waste into the landfills. We didn’t like the idea of our kid wearing whatever chemicals they put in disposable diapers to make them so absorbent. And after some number crunching, we discovered that using cloth would, over the long term, save us more than $1000 (for each kid we have).

My mother-in-law and her sisters thought we were crazy. They sent us packages of disposables in the weeks before our son was born. No matter how many times we explained how much easier cloth diapers have gotten to use over the last thirty years, how many more options there are available and how little work cloth needs to be, they still insisted that we would hate using them.

You never want to admit that your mother-in-law is right, even if you really love your mother-in-law, which I do. The worst still is when your mother-in-law is right about something that you really believed she wouldn’t be right about because it relates to one of your “core principles.”

We did decide before Evan was born that we would use disposables until his umbilical cord stump had fallen off since the diapers we’d gotten weren’t really small enough to accommodate our need to protect his belly button. But our plan was to start using them within a couple of weeks of his birth.

And use them we did, once or twice. But even though we had gotten the newborn size cloth diapers and covers, meant especially for babies as small as ours, they were way too big for him. The diaper part hung out of the cover at least four inches in the back, creeping up past Evan’s shoulder blades. And despite the fact that his onesies were all way too big for him at the time, they barely fit over his giant cloth diapers. He looked like a pear or one of those small dolls that’s rounded at the bottom so that it won’t tip over. He was uncomfortable, and I don’t blame him!

So we decided to give it a few more weeks with the disposables. At six weeks, we tried the cloth again. The diapers were still too big for him but now some of the covers were already too small. Each time I put Evan in one, it leaked all over his clothes, swaddling blanket, and bed sheets. Or all over me. I promised myself we’d do one a day for awhile, and then two, and then gradually make the switch.

But Evan hated them. He was so uncomfortable with them on. After wearing an ice pack and industrial-sized maxi in the hospital after he was born, I felt for the kid. It’s no fun feeling like you’ve got a queen-sized mattress between your legs. Especially, I imagine, if that queen-sized mattress is soaked in your own urine. Poor kid.

So now we’re at three months and Evan’s still wearing just disposables. I really don’t mind washing the cloth ones. Whenever Evan poops on the changing table (which is surprisingly often), I “catch it” with the cloth diapers and washing them, even when they’re poop-sodden, is no big deal. One cold-water rinse with baking soda, one hot/cold wash with dye-free Purex. It’s so easy even a teenaged boy not yet skilled in the hows and whys of laundry care could do it.

And yet I’m convinced that Evan hates them. Could I be projecting? Could I secretly hate them? Or is it that I can’t help but think that I would hate them if I were the one who had to wear them? Is this just misplaced empathy?

Perhaps it is.

But it’s got me thinking. Hard. Thinking about how I reconcile my parenting self – the version of me that wants my son to be comfortable, healthy, and happy – with my pre-parenting self – the version of me that wanted to practice low-impact parenting. The version of me who wanted to get back to the simple things, the basics. Will I start buying baby food in plastic containers when it comes time for solids, preferring the ease of pre-made food to the trouble of making baby food myself? Will Evan, like my nieces, refuse to eat much of the homemade food, preferring the store-bought variety instead?

My instinct is to tell myself to go with the flow. Don’t scrutinize every single decision and just do what works on a day-to-day basis. Parenting is hard enough and there’s so much guilt that comes along with it already. Don’t put undue pressure on yourself. But then I think of the slippery slope that puts me on. When does this mindless, convenient lifestyle change back into the life I had imagined for us? Disposable diapers turn into plastic food containers turn into Lunchables? My very worst nightmare. Seriously.

But am I ready to start now? What compromises can I make? What am I flat unwilling to compromise on?

These are questions I can’t answer yet. They’re questions I need to ask and then ask again until the answers come to me. And come to me they will, I’m sure. And when they do, you’ll hear about it. Rest assured.

(Edited to add: I do recognize that there are options available to us that don't require those bulky, mattress-like cloth prefolds. I know that there are all-in-one cloth diapers that wouldn't be so bulky in my kid's nether region. But I also know that these are expensive. A starter "kit" for these costs at least $400, which we can afford on disposables because it's spread out over 15 to 20 weeks but which we can't really just plunk down all at once, especially when we're concerned about whether they'll work for us.)

:: New Year's Coincidences ::

My mom's never been a resolution-maker. Well. Strike that. She's never been a resolution-maker on January 1st. She makes resolutions all year long: to eat healthy, to spend more time with her friends, to stay more organized, to give up her home business (she also works full time). But she's not keen on making them at the same time everyone else does. She thinks, and I agree, that people's expectations are too high at New Year's. They set goals they never intend to keep -- no wonder most people don't make it to the end of January with their resolutions.

This year, however, she happens to have a couple of resolutions she wants to make, some goals she wants to set for herself, and she's kind of upset that it happens to be New Years. So my sister suggested that maybe they could be New Year's Coincidences, rather than New Year's Resolutions. I sort of like this.

Of course, I myself have always made resolutions and set goals. Since I was 8, I've kept a diary or journal and each year, I've sat at midnight (or on January 1st) and made long lists of goals and resolutions: save $1000; make a new friend; grow three inches (obviously, I don't set this one anymore); read one book a week for the entire year. I also go back through the previous year's goals and resolutions and count up how many I achieved and how many I didn't. I had percentages to compare from previous years and was always half proud of my progress and half determined to do even better the next year. The process was quite laborious when I was young, when I would set as many as fifty goals, but as I've gotten older I've tended to choose just one or two. Two years ago my goal was to take more trips home to Rochester to see my family than I had the previous year. I achieved that one. The year before I think my goal was to buy a house. I bought a condo.

This coming year, I hardly even know where to begin. So much is coming up in 2007. New job for Brian. The bulk of my dissertation writing for me. NEW BABY!

Now, I'm not sure this is the resolution (or coincidence) for me, but I have been doing a little reading around about resolutions, and I'm quite interested in a mass-resolution made by over 3000 people last year. The group calls itself The Compact. It is a group of people (based in San Francisco but extending around the globe thanks to a blog (http://sfcompact.blogspot.com/) and a Yahoo Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact/)) who have made the following pledges in their commitment to a 12-month "flight from the consumer grid":

• To go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of disposable consumer culture and to support local businesses, farms, etc. -- a step that, we hope, inherits the revolutionary impulse of the Mayflower Compact.


• To reduce clutter and waste in our homes (as in trash Compact-er).


• To simplify our lives (as in Calm-pact).

To these ends, the group does not buy new products of any kind from stores, websites, etc. except for necessities like food. They are allowed to buy movie tickets and things -- things that they experience rather than horde. To get what they do need, they borrow, barter, or buy used. Think Christmas a la Craig's List.

The idea at the heart of The Compact is an interesting one, and one that I like at first. Fully 10 to 15 percent of my own (and Brian's) regular monthly budget usually goes towards just the sort of things that The Compact strives to avoid buying. Imagine if I could save all that money, and probably more. Think of the money saved at Christmas, and the fun (and challenge) it would be to come up with creative gift-giving ideas.

At the same time, though, I think that there are ways to save just as much money, and possibly to have as strong an impact on the environment, etc., without going to such extremes. What if instead of refusing to buy new clothes, I refused to buy cheap clothing. No more synthetic fabrics, no more $10 Target t-shirts or shoes from Old Navy. Just nice, tailored, classic clothing and well-made shoes. I'd probably save as much money in the end and wouldn't have to replace my stuff as often. Shoes would last me five years instead of a few months. Sweaters wouldn't pill or stretch.

It makes me wonder, though: what changes could I make that would feel (a) like a real commitment but not (b) like I was buying things I didn't like (like used clothing that never seems to fit quite right) or (c) like I was depriving myself or my family of things that would give us pleasure. Imagine not being able to buy new sparklers for the fourth of July. Or not being able to buy books, instead always having to get them from the library. Books, reading them, working with them, and living with them, make me happy.

I guess the real question is: how do I balance my desire to make an impact (or to lesson my impact) with my desire to feel fulfilled and free? And then: am I shallow for wanting to buy my sister a new necklace for her birthday, knowing it will make her happy to have it? Is consumerism necessarily a bad thing, or is there a way to resolve to be a more mindful consumer without having to throw away the whole thing?

:: The Definition of Insanity ::

Perhaps made most famous by Kramer and Newman on Seinfeld, who tried to fill a postal truck with bottles from New York to return, at double the deposit refund, in Michigan, eleven states currently have “bottle bills,” also known as “container deposit laws.” A container deposit law requires a minimum refundable deposit on beer, soft drink and other beverage containers in order to insure a high rate of recycling or reuse.

(Here, the dark color denotes states with current bottle bills. The lighter shade denotes states in which there are current campaigns. Image courtesy of www.bottlebill.org).

Coming from New York, where the bottle bill first passed in 1982, container deposits were always just a part of my life. When I was eight or nine, my father even helped me start a little business called EBFU, or Environmental Bottle Finders Unlimited. His company was building/renovating a very large building, so every weekend dad and I would go over to the worksite and collect all of the bottles and cans left behind by the workmen. Then, he would take me to Wegmans and we would turn in the bottles for 5 cents apiece. Finally, the boring part: we would go home and input our new earnings into this AppleWorks spreadsheet dad had created for me. We kept track of spending (I think he charged me for the black trash bags we used, but not for the gas required to drive out to East Rochester) and income. By the time the building was finished I had earned more than $100.

The first time I left home was for North Carolina: one semester at the University of NC at Chapel Hill. There is no bottle deposit in North Carolina, and I remember that being one of the first things I noticed there: people threw their bottles in the trash! No one I knew at home would ever have done that.

Now, living in Ohio, I find the same thing here. On campus (at Ohio State), there are a few places on campus to recycle cans and bottles, but you have to seek them out. Most people just toss their bottles in the trash with their Fritos bags and Snickers wrappers. And, since there is no curbside recycling program here (unless you pay for it privately), most people I know also throw their cans and bottles away at home! Before Brian and I started paying for recycling service, we did, though it felt so strangely foreign.

This made me wonder: why don’t all 50 states have bottle bills? They don’t seem like they harm anyone. So I did a little research.

First, the good:
According to NYPIRG, more than 80 billion bottles and cans have been returned and recycled over the last 20 years through New York’s bottle bill. More than five million tons of plastic, glass and metal have been kept out of our landfills and incinerators. And, “there is less litter and broken glass in New York streets, parks, playgrounds and beaches, making them safer, cleaner, and more attractive.” In fact, NYPIRG just got a “bigger, better bottle bill” passed by a 2-to-1 margin in New York, which will expand the program to include deposits on non-carbonated beverages such as bottled water, iced tea, juice and sports drinks and to require the beverage industry to return all unclaimed deposits to the state to fund recycling programs and other environmental needs.

However:
Not surprisingly, the bottle industry doesn’t like bottle bills. Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the association of food, beverage, and consumer products companies, argues that “mandatory deposit measures” are “costly, inefficient and targeted at a narrow segment of the waste stream.” They have a white paper here, if you’re interested. Now, I’m not trying to take sides, but I find GMA’s white paper to be heavy on words and light on actual statistics, which as any first-year college student will tell you is a sign that the statistics may not be in their favor. Their main complaint is that bottle bill recycling programs are costly to run because they necessitate a whole system of tracking, sorting, etc. They would prefer bottles be returned via curbside recycling. That’s nice, but 50% of the nation still doesn’t have curbside recycling. They also complain that bottle bill recycling programs take valuable income away from curbside recycling companies because it takes aluminum (a lucrative recyclable) out of the curbside bins.

The thing is, I want so badly to get involved somehow. As my recent posts suggest, I feel like there are so many small ways for us to make changes in our daily lives that would have a good (even if small) impact on our world. And, I feel like mostly we just don’t know to do those things. So I like to read up on stuff and, when possible, share what I’ve learned. But when it comes to taking bigger action, I often feel like I don’t know what the right thing is to do. Bottlebill.org, for example, has a toolkit for activists. If I wanted to, I could start a bottle bill campaign here in Ohio. But then I wonder: are the industry pundits at least partly right? Would my time and effort be better spent on, say, rallying for curbside recycling. Yeah, probably. But then again, isn’t there then also probably something even bigger on which my time would be even still better spent?

This is certainly the definition of inertia, that property of matter (and people) by which things at rest remain at rest unless acted on by some external force. Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t also the definition of insanity: such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity to act; extreme folly or unreasonableness. (These definitions have been adapted from Merriam Webster Online).

:: Will That Be Paper Or Plastic? ::

I'm not great, but I try to be as earth-friendly as I can. I drive a Honda Civic and try to walk or ride my bike whenever possible. I stay home to study, most days, instead of heading out to Starbucks or someplace. We recycle like crazy in our house. Since we started paying for recycling at the house (it's not free here in Columbus like it was home), our trash has been at least halved and our recycling bin is always overflowing into other bags or boxes.

I also try to learn as much as I can. Because sometimes, things that seem right aren't always. I've become a big huge proponent of paper bags at the grocery stores because I always thought, "Hey! Trees are renewable and petroleum (what makes plastic) isn't. Plus, paper's biodegradable and plastic's not."

My grocery store absolutely HATES this. Whenever I request paper instead of plastic I get a sigh and this really exaggerated removal of the plastic bags and supposed search for the paper ones. I try to look at the tabloids during this process to avoid giving what some people say is a certain look I give.

When I used to live in Ithaca, I used cloth bags and no one cared. They loved it. I get the feeling that if I tried that here, I'd be asked to leave.

Anyway, after my mid-week run to the store for the things I forgot or needed fresh (shrimp), I got to thinking about how I'd really love to have some statistics to back me up in my crusade to replace plastic bags with paper ones.

I am here to admit that I may be wrong. Consider the following:

ILEA, The Institute for Lifecycle Assessment, after a lengthy and detailed study, concluded the following:

"Through a lifecycle energy analysis, plastic is the better bag. At current recycling rates two plastic bags use less energy and produce less solid, atmospheric, and waterborne waste than a single paper bag. Moreover future improvements only increase preference in plastic bags. Increasing recycling rates and reducing the 2-to-1 ratio through proper bagging techniques would further the energy preference for plastic bags."

ILEA gives the short and sweet answer here, on a postcard you can print out and send to a friend (in case you don't want to save paper and send that friend an email or a link to my blog or to the ILEA website).

Now, in case you don't want to just take ILEA at their word, and in case you want to know about more than just energy input and output, the Environmental Literacy Council also provides an interesting analysis of the environmental impact. They address one of my specific concerns:

"Although plastics do not biodegrade, modern landfills are designed in such a way that nothing biodegrades, because the waste is isolated from air and water in order to prevent groundwater contamination and air pollution. As manufacturers have continued to make their plastic packaging thinner and lighter to save materials, the percentage of landfill volume taken up by plastics has remained steady since 1970 even as plastics have become more widely used."

They also do make note of the many concerns we should have with plastic including littering, animal impact, and even flooding:

"In 2002, Bangladesh banned plastic bags after drains blocked by bags contributed to widespread monsoon flooding in 1988 and 1998. Ireland has decreased plastic bag consumption by placing a consumer tax on plastic bags. Perhaps the most strict plastic bag regulations are found in the Indian province of Himachal Pradesh, where people caught with plastic bags are fined $2000. "

At any rate, I think the answer is that we should all start using re-usable cloth bags. I'm sure the nice people at the grocery store won't actually escort me out to my car, right?