Cloth Diaper Choices

Reducing Household Waste

By Tiffany ⋅ July 13, 2009 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

One of the many reasons we encourage parents to cloth diaper their children is to reduce our nation’s overall household waste.

According to Cleanair.org, the average American produces almost 4.5 pounds of trash per day and 56 tons of trash per year. Again, this statistic is per person. If each person in a household could reduce the amount of waste they produce each day, imagine how much less would be dumped into landfills each year.

Less waste into landfills means less money spent to transport waste and maintain landfills; it also means more tax dollars could be spent on education or other areas. For instance, waste management for disposable diapers alone costs $350 billion dollars annually (sadly, the diapers will still be around 500+ years from now). The use of cloth diapers, even if only used part-time, could reduce the 49 million diapers that Americans throw away in a single day. Using cloth diapers is just one example of how families and individual Americans can reduce household waste. More ideas for reducing, reusing and recycling household waste are listed below.

REDUCE

• Wrap a soft cloth diaper around your baby instead of a disposable diaper. Reduce the approximate 6,000 disposable diapers that each child uses from birth until potty trained (a cost of about $2,400)
• Compost uncooked non-meat kitchen scraps. You can make your own Kitchen compost keepers or buy them to hold your scraps until you are ready to add them to your compost pile.
• Compost yard waste or use a mulching mower.
• Use cloth kitchen towels versus paper towels. Bamboo towels are reusable and offer the additional benefit of a renewable fiber source. They can also hold more water than their paper-based counterparts.
• For home parties use compostable plates, cups, and utensils. Although you will still throw these away, at least they break down quickly.

REUSE

• Purchase and use reusable shopping bags, which reduces the number of plastic bags dumped each day. Can you crochet? Make your own Reusable Grocery Bags from any of the plastic grocery bags you might already be storing to reuse!
• Instead of bottled water, purchase a Kleen Kanteen or other reusable water bottle.
• Wash out and reuse glass and plastic containers for food or other storage (avoid placing hot food or heating foods in plastic containers, however).
• Wash plastic food storage bags to reuse again. It might be prudent, however, to label bags if they contained meat products to avoid any cross-contamination. (Each year enough plastic is produced in America to shrink-wrap Texas).
• Purchase reusable inexpensive plates, cups and utensils for home parties. Purchase of bamboo products offers the additional benefit of a renewable wood-like fiber source, as bamboo quickly replenishes itself.
• Keep your previously printed-on paper to flip and use for scrap coloring pages for kids, to cut into fourths, and staple together to reuse for quick notes in the car, in your purse, or by the phone.
• Be thrifty, accept or use hand-me-downs from friends or your own family.

RECYCLE

• Recycle aluminum cans. Did you know recycling aluminum cans uses 90% less energy than manufacturing a new one from ore.
• Donate gently-used, unwanted clothes to thrift stores, local charities or friends.
• Support recycling by purchasing products made from recycled goods; for example, toilet tissue, paper towels and writing/printing paper made from post-consumer paper fibers. Many environmentally conscious companies also use use recycled products, like Country Save Powdered Laundry Detergent to manufacture their packaging.
• Re-purpose cardboard boxes; use them to make forts or pretend kitchens for your children. Or make them flat and keep them until you need to ship something.
• After your baby has potty trained, pack up your cloth diaper stash for subsequent children, reuse as rags or dust rags or car buffers; you can even pass them on to friends or family members expecting a baby!

Answer me this…what can you do, or what are you already doing, to reduce your 4.5 pounds of trash production per day? Please feel free to share your ideas on reducing household waste by posting what you have done in your own home.

(Waste statistics for this post were taken from cleanair.org)

Cloth Diaper Blog is published by www.diaperjunction.com.