Save on baby's bottom line!

My wife is due to give birth to our second child on the 25th of August. We are looking forward to it with great anticipation! Our first is now four years old and we brought her up on cloth diapers. Now don't think of the ones you or your brother or sister used to wear. Cloth diapers like Apple Computers have come a long way since the 80's. There are a number of brands available on the Internet but my sister helped us by having her child first and experimenting with several not so improved cloth diaper incarnations. We did try a few of them ourselves but for us Fuzzibunz was the best solution! These babies behave and preform as well as almost any disposable out there only they are reusable and baby's bottom will thank you as well because they cut down considerably on incidences of baby rash. They are of the family of cloth diapers called "pocket" diapers. The diaper is waterproof on the outside and warm fuzzy and absorbent on the inside thanks to a microfiber fleece that keeps babys' bottom warm and dry. The fleece acts as a wick and draws any wetness into the inserts. The inserts are the second part of the groovey technology you "stuff" 1-3 absorbent inserts into the pocket of the diaper and these help keep baby dry. We usally use 1 or 2 during the day and 3 at night. We have recommended them to many of our friends and some have taken us up on it! One friend even decided to use fuzzibunz on her third daughter after using disposables for their first two. With the money they saved on disposable diapers they bought themselves a new dinning room set. Really switching to these diapers can save you alot. The initial investment can be 2 to 3 hundred dollars but in the long run you save thousands. Worried about washing them? Don't worry just have a diaper pail with a little water and a teaspoon of your favorite detergent in it and run the diapers to the washing machine every evening after baby goes to bed. Really like any other suggestions I have made on my blog it is just a small new habit you have to start. Also these cloth diapers don't only save baby's bottom they help your bottom line!!!

Building green suddenly in Vogue! Because it is another way to save you money!

Wow, you mean going green can actually save me money?!? While up until now solar panels and making your home more energy efficient was something that only the rich and famous could think about or afford, suddenly more middle class home owners are seeing the benefit. Bottom line - invest a little green now and save A LOT of "$$green$$" on energy costs down the road. My host family in Germany converted 2 years ago to solar to help with their heating costs. The house the family lives in is over 450 years old, has been in the family for many generations and is a case in point that the age of a house doesn't matter. As you can see by the picture, the historic beauty of this house is preserved and you can't even see the solar panels from the street...because they are on the backside of the house. All houses can be retrofitted and benefit from the new technologies. Not to mention, this activity will give jobs to people in the U.S. and bring us closer to energy independence. More details on the trend can be found in this A.P. article. Think about it if you do something as simple as insulating your attic more it could save you lots of $$money$$ in the years to come!

KEEP THINKING, ACTING AND GOING GREEN!!!

Garbage man charging you too much? Bring it to your local transfer station yourself and save some money!

The garbage truck doesn't currently stop at my house because I like to make sure things are sorted and end up in the right(ok better) places. My wife and I maintain a compost in the back corner of our lot and we recycle the majority of the paper, cardboard and assorted containers that make their way through our household. Then every 2 to three weeks I make a trip to the transfer station with my daughter and put it in the proper receptacles. As long as your transfer station isn't too far away this can definitely save you money. It wasn't always like this I grew up in the 70's and as most Americans I was raised as a ravenous consumer of disposal of goods and services and most by-products ended up on the curb to be schlepped away by a dirty smelly gas-guzzling monster trash truck (unlike this one)that would then deposit all that stuff in a land-fill a few miles away from my home in the country somewhere. The cost of this fabulous service was rolled into my taxes. Now in the north and the south frequently trash removal services are yet another monthly bill on our credit card we need to pay. And I feel that these services don't always recycle the things we place in the recycling bin. That's why I do it myself now. In upstate New York they were very picky about what they would and wouldn't except in the recycling bin: this plastic and not that one, and only if sanitized, and only newspaper and only if it was in a separate bag etc. .

So currently we live in Upstate South Carolina. I am a German Teacher and my profession brought me here. My profession also led me to this point, this blog and many of the decisions I have made about the environment. I was born and raised in Upstate New York in a little town outside of Albany, NY called Voorheesville. The aforementioned dump has since closed and become a "transfer-station" itself. I wonder if officer Opey has measured it's (carbon) footprint or taken 8x10 glossy photos of it. (sorry for the random Alice's Restaurant reference, I'm an avid Arlo Guthrie fan as you can tell by my long winded blog post) So after graduating high school I "fled" to a little town in Germany for an 13th exchange year (they have one more year than we do for high school over there). It was during that year that I first learned about German culture, and habits. Even in 1987 Germany was far ahead of America when it came to environmental matters. Recycling and composting were commonplace. I didn't fully appreciate all the differences between these two industrialized countries until I returned to Germany with my wife and 2yr. old daughter in 2006 to obtain my masters degree through Middlebury college. In Germany they are organized as you may know and this extends even to their recycling. Even in public places like train stations and just out on the street they offer many receptacles for your trash (see photos above and below) At home it's easier though you have a composting bin (for food waste) and a "Gelbe Sack" (the yellow sack/bag) for everything else. You see in Germany there are laws about recycling and industry is responsible for all the packaging it produces and they must pay for the recycling of it. Since the enactment of this law in 1990 in Germany companies have rethought packaging and work with more recyclable materials and minimize packaging. This Wikipedia article explains it better look under concept for explanation of the yellow bags. Well that's it for today. I promise future posts will be more concise. I hope at least it gave you some food for thought. (here's another picture of a place to recycle/ put your trash in a Berlin subway.)

Reusable bags will save you money! / Most stores give you 5 cents for every reusable bag you bring to the store!

First some facts

• The average reusable bag consumer uses only four bags per year
• The average disposable bag user consumes more than 700 bags a year.

Whenever you are standing in the checkout line you are sometimes faced with the question "paper or plastic?" Knee jerk logic has you thinking well paper is probably easier to recycle, so that's better, right? While you can reuse plastic bags as a trash bag liner, or a convenient pooper-scooper for your doggy and no trees had to be cut down to make the plastic bag, that doesn't mean it is lighter on the environment. So which choice do you think is truly better?

The deal with plastic bags

Plastic bags are not bio-degradable and are made from polyethylene (a byproduct of petroleum). So if we quit using them we might help cut down on the consumption of crude oil too! Besides plastic bags remain intact for thousands of years in the landfill. The U.S. uses about 100 billion of the 500 billion to a trillion plastic bags that are used and then thrown away every year worldwide ! The hundred billion we use in the U.S. use up 12 million barrels of crude oil to make them.

Only one percent of plastic bags actually get recycled, leaving 99% of the plastic to leach into soil and groundwater. Scientist are finding that the remaining discarded plastic bags (200,000 make their way to the landfill every hour!) are killing an estimated 100,00 marine mammals and sea turtles each year due to their ingesting the bags. Recent studies by these same scientists show that the oceans are full of tiny plastic pieces which in some areas of the ocean are beginning to outweigh plankton.

The deal with paper bags

In the production of paper bags many trees are used. Chainsaws, and all the other trucks and machinery needed to harvest trees require a lot of fossil fuel and the laying down of roads that put stress on forest ecology and wildlife. The process of making paper also involves using huge amounts of clean water. So the production of paper really has an huge environmental impact when you add it up.

Of course generally paper bags hold more groceries than the average plastic bag, so fewer are used (one paper bag can hold the same volume as three to four plastic bags). Even though paper bags can be made from 100 percent recycled content and they're considered CO2 neutral. Still more energy is used in their production than plastic, and the energy and chemicals involved pollutes our water and air.

So what do I do?
Here comes the challenge I promised. No don't stop reading now! There is an alternative to paper or plastic that most Americans don't consider mainly because it isn't as "convenient", and that is reusable cloth or canvas bags. I know this because even I have sacrificed sensibility and logic for convenience myself. While abroad in Germany 2 years ago, I always brought cloth bags along to the store because there I didn't have a choice. If you want a bag there you have to pay for it! (Not to mention we pay for it in the U.S. in the price of the products!). So really it is just a simple habit you need to change. I suggest you buy yourself a few good reusable bags and keep them in the trunk of your car so you never have the excuse you forgot them at home. Recently I remembered my bags and it felt so good to take the groceries that the clerk had already packed in plastic bags out of them and put the groceries in my cloth bags. So here's the challenge try to start using reusable bags when you go to the grocery store. It is a simple thing you can feel good about. I am going to be sure I always use mine from now on. Besides many stores will give you 5 cents of your bill for every reusable bag you bring with you to the store! Good luck and keep going green!

P.S. Other International inspirations

• China, France, and Bangladesh have all banned plastic bags.
• Ireland put a consumer tax on plastic bags that resulted in a 90 percent reduction in use.
• In an Indian province (Himachal Pradesh, people get fined $2,000 if caught with plastic bags.

I got the information for this article from the following books and sources: The Complete Idiot's Guide to green Living by Trish Riley ($16.95Alpha, 2007) * "The Great Plastic Bag Plague" by Tara Lohan, www.alternet.org, 9/5/07*www.cawrecycles.org*"Paper or Plastic-What's the Greener Choice?" by Anne Thompson, www.msnbc.mns.com, 5/7/07*www.reusablebags.com*www.techalive.mtu.edu*"paper, Plastic or Prada?" by Lisa McLauhlin, www.time.com 8/2/07