For some time, my wife and I have been talking about how deficient we are when it comes to our concern for our environment. And over the years, little has been done to right the deficiency. But we have been noticing a shift in our souls. A shift that is producing action over complacency.
I know folks have different views on things, so this is no way meant to be elitist or snobby, but we have felt really convicted – after having three kids and expecting our fourth in August – about how disposable diapers are not that good for the environment.
It is estimated that roughly 5 million tons of untreated waste and a total of 2 billion tons of urine, feces, plastic and paper are added to landfills I annually. It takes around 80,000 pounds of plastic and over 200,000 trees a year to manufacture the disposable diapers for American babies alone. Although some disposables are said to be biodegradable; in order for these diapers to decompose, they must be exposed to air (oxygen) and sun. With this in mind, it can take several hundred years for the decomposition of disposables to take place, with some of the plastic material never decomposing. The untreated waste placed in landfills by dirty disposable diapers is also a possible danger to contaminating ground water.
Pro-disposable advocates say that cleaning cloth diapers uses more energy, and contributes to the load on sanitary sewer systems and potential water pollution. The problem is the amount of water used per week to wash cloth diapers at home is about the same amount consumed by an adult flushing the toilet four or five times daily for a week. Also, the greater amount of water and energy being used by diaper service companies to wash large amounts of cloth diapers multiple times; the per diaper impact on energy and water supplies is actually less than home washing.
Finally, when flushing solids from a cloth diaper down the toilet and washing the diapers in a washing machine, the contaminated, dirty water from both toilet and washing machine go into the sewer systems where they are properly treated at wastewater plants. This treated wastewater is much more environmentally friendly than dumping untreated soiled disposable diapers into a landfill.
I know that was heavy, but I wanted to give you some background on this issue.
So why I am talking about this? Well, we have decided with our almost 1-year old and our forthcoming baby boy that will shift primarily – if not completely – to cloth diapers. We have started the process slowly but surely with our 1-year old, but haven’t shifted completely quite yet. It’s pretty hard to do this cold turkey.
As we’ve been researching, our 5 and 3-year old have been ‘taking notes.’ And this week, in a weak moment, we put a disposable “white” diaper on our 1-year old. The kids now call them “white” diapers. Our 5-year old immediately scolded us and said that “We were hurting the world.” Then our 3-year old joined right in and said “Yea and your hurting the trees too!”
So at least we have some accountability. Innocent as it may be…
My wife told me she had heard this on the news so I looked it up and it is true: St. Louis has been chosen as having the best tasting city water in America. 
The 7 are seven blog entries that stood out from the past few weeks [usually it's just from the last week but I'm behind] in the blogosphere.
Here is this week’s edition of The Rearview Mirror, where we peruse the past week’s best of the best in the blogosphere. Enjoy!
