being green + babbling about diapers

I found this story from instapundit about how it isn't easy, being green. Since reading what wmw had to say on her blog about diapers and the environment(and since I started participating by diapering the bug (ie tobo) in cloth) I have really started to think about what kind of a foot print we are leaving behind. If there are less wasteful (and ideally cheaper) ways we could be living by making simple changes to what we buy and how we throw it out.

Back to the article. I guess it is not surprising that it is greener to live like sardines, than to live in the'burbs. I was surprised thought that they state it's greener to drive a used car than a hybrid. So what we need to do is wait for the used-hybrid market to pick up. In a million years.

but back to the diaper news you all are waiting to hear with baited breath: :)

I'm now on a quest to find Country Safe, which, in liquid form, will work with our crazy hard water AND clean my diapers. I'm officially ruling that the simple green+washing soda thing just doesn't work here in hardwater land. I did an extreme stripping of the bumgenius yesterday [boil water, tsp dawn, scrub bg on the inside with dawn, take water off heat, stick diaper in water until cools, wash like normal] to no avail, which leads me to believe that the detergent is the problem. It has sealed up the fuzzy bun once again, never fixed the bg, and has periodically solidified the thirstes aio too. So, we move on to see if CountrySave really is good in hard water. This is based on the recommendation of a cottonbabies customer service rep, who gave me the idea to boil my diaper. I did find out from her though that the reason the bg is being so difficult is because the weave is much tighter than you're average pocket, which means that once it gets coated, it is hard to get clean.

but I digress. I had thought I would find CS at our local veggie co-op, but no good. I then went by the new fancy-smancy grocery store and found that they not only didn't have CS, but they didn't have Calgon either. (an alternative suggestion from the rep) Favorite moment: the 16-year-old checker nicely told me she's never heard of Calgon, was it some kind of soap? Har! What was crazier is that she offered to order it for me if I wanted, no extra cost. (I told her to get CS instead, after I picked my jaw off the floor.) Apparently to get an item at the store just need to ask for it. Like Brummel and Brown strawberry spread? Ask for it by name. Unfortunately it will take 2 weeks to come in so I'm still going to see if I can find it else where. Can't not use our pockets for 2 weeks waiting for safeway to maybe order something that someone might have remembered to write down at the end of her shift on a wednesday night. She didn't take down my name or anything either. So that means they really do take orders seriously and will order it on the assumption that someone will by it or they have electronic tracking devices that link up to a database of all their customers, and were tracking me through the store. Pick your paranoia.

We got our big bonanza of diaper stuff in yesterday evening, including a wet/dry bag, pail liner, flannel wipes(50 cents a wipe), and rice paper liners. Tobo doesn't really know what to think of the liners, but they should slow the butt cream transfer ratio to our expensive diapers immensely. They also work, which is awes0me. I won't go into details, but yeah, it's cool. The wipes are exactly what I was hoping for, simple, big enough, and washable. I also got a spray bottle to make life easier when cleaning up the baby.

The other excitment this week has been attack of the cradle cap. (or cradle crap as my mom-in-law calls it) Because of the crazy hot day Tuesday, Tobo's head had a massive break out. Any suggestions for dealing with it?