Sometimes I feel a little bit like Kermit

This post is for Michelle over at Plus One. Check out her blog in general and, specifically, her contest for unpaper towels.

When we have kids we think about many, many things – from giddy, happy things like baby’s first Christmas and starting new family traditions to the ugly side of parenting like loss of sleep. But one thing we never think about beforehand is the environmental impact of having one or more children.

What exactly is the environmental impact of children?

Diapers are the first thing everyone thinks about and disposable diapers certainly add tons, quite literally, to the waste stream. But what about water? Electricity? Gas?

As I sat down to write this post I smugly thought about all the great things we’ve done to lessen the environmental impact of adding one more person to our family…and realized that we really haven’t done all that much.

I recycle glass, plastic, metals and paper products, but I did that before The Punkin got here. (I need to take a moment to brag on The Punkin here. The other day she put her father’s coke can in the recycling can and told me she was “de-cycling”. I was so proud of her.)

I’m a little bit of an electricity-nag, always going behind my husband and cutting off lights, sometimes getting yelled at if he’s still in the room when I cut the light off. And I wash all our clothes except towels in cold water. (I do make the allowance of washing towels in warm water.) But, again, I did those things prior to having a baby.

As far as water consumption, I’ve made one small change recently. Our bathtub faucet drips and I’ve started putting a bucket under it and using the water collected to water plants. Better than it going down the drain. But that’s the only change.

Our one bright spot is our gas use. I’ve not measured it, but I’m sure our gas consumption is about even, if not less, than before we had a baby. Driving to daycare does add another mile or two to our daily commute, but overall we’re not driving as much. We don’t go out to eat as much, we stay at home more in the evening, and I plan trips to the grocery store and KMart instead of going out for one thing at a time.

But aside from gas, our overall consumption has increased. Heck, just through toys alone, our consumption has increased. I’m sure Grammy was responsible for the demise of an acre or two of forest last Christmas simply from the packaging and wrapping paper around all the toys. I did make a valiant effort to collect and recycle as much of the wrapping paper as possible and all the boxes. But still, I was a little appalled at the amount of STUFF my child received at Christmas. But my feelings about the overabundance of toys in her life will be saved for another post.

So this post is not so much about what we’ve done as what I’m going to do.

And what am I going to do? I’m going to take it one step at a time. Right now I’m doing research on cloth diapers. I had big plans about cloth diapers with The Punkin, but ultimately ended up going for the convenience of disposable. With He-Who-Is-Not-Yet-Named, I’m making a commitment to cloth diaper at least part time (and by part-time, I mean weekends) or full time if our day care is open to it.

Ultimately, I would like to have a garden with a compost pile to further cut down on our waste stream and provide fresh produce for my family. That feels like a big project that will take a couple of summers to fulfill. So, while I’m greening up my family one-step at a time, I may come up with a five-year plan of ideas. If anyone reading this has any ideas they’d like to contribute, let me know and I’ll see about incorporating them into my family.