The end of an era

And not just the transition from winter to spring.

Every Monday night we put out our dirty cloth diapers for pickup Tuesday morning, along with a delivery of fresh clean ones.  Today was the last time, pickup only, no delivery.

We had a few reasons for using cloth diapers.  The main one being that I think it's better for the environment.  Although that's somewhat of a gut feeling.  It's very difficult to actually prove that statement one way or the other, because you have to make so many assumptions.  My feeling is that it's probably better if you're using a diaper service, due to the economies of scale, but I suspect if you're using your own water and energy to wash them (esp. if you don't have a front loading washer), that you're probably better off with disposables.  And although plenty of people do it, I think given all of the things you need to deal with as a new parent that you're kind of crazy to add washing dirty diapers to the mix.

There's also the theory that disposable diapers have gotten *too* good.  For any of you that haven't changed a diaper in a number of years, you might be surprised at how ridiculously absorbent they've gotten.  They expand like crazy when inundated with absurd amounts of liquid, but they don't actually get wet.  It's pretty freaky.  Anyway, the theory goes that because babies don't actually feel the wetness, they don't get the feedback needed to learn what's going on as easily, and you end up toilet training later.  Although, as my Mom has pointed out, early toilet training is a mixed blessing.  There's a wonderful convenience of diapers, and having to suddenly deal with finding a bathroom for your toddler every moment he needs it (which inevitably will be immediately after leaving some place that had an easy bathroom, like your house) doesn't sound like it's necessarily the best tradeoff.

The cost was fairly similar (when compared to an unbleached, unscented disposable brand like Seventh Generation) when we started out, but over time cloth diapers became relatively much more expensive.  The issue is that we're using less, but to a first order you pay for the service, not the number of diapers.  You only save $0.50 for having 10 less diapers a week delivered.  And we weren't using exclusively cloth anyway.  We've always used a disposable at night, and as we've wanted to be able to be out of the house for longer periods of time without having to change Dylan, we started using more disposables during the day as well.  I'd imagine we're way in the minority for sticking with it for 17 months.  Add the fact that Lorien is still breast feeding, and probably even more so.  (Although there's perhaps a bit of a correlation.)

So we decided that it was time to simplify our lives somewhat, especially given the unexpected complication of dealing with cancer.  (Okay, it was mostly Lorien that decided, but I went along without protesting.)  It's part of a series of small steps at simplifying things in our life.  We started composting soon after moving to our house in 2005, but back then the City of Berkeley wasn't yet doing it.  When they did start a number of years later, we still kept it up.  But we were somewhat picky, and didn't want any animal products (except for egg shells) in our garden compost.  So now we had two different composts, city compost and garden compost.  Lorien's been bugging me about the absurdity for a while, but finally declared a few weeks back that everything was going into city compost.  Which I suppose I have to reluctantly admit makes sense, especially when neither of us has had much time for gardening.  Not to mention the fact that as Berkeley residents we can get compost for free once a month if we're willing to pick it up.

Not that our waste stream is yet entirely simplified.  There has been another recent casualty in the waste separation, though.  Given the philosophy that re-use is better than recycle, we also save some items for eventual donation to The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse.  That included empty egg cartons.  I gather that they're in high demand by schoolteachers.  Nevertheless, the last time I went to drop off a lot (and I mean a lot -- they pile up a bit), they said they already had too many.  Lorien thought I was crazy, but I responded by putting an ad on craigslist.  I was astounded at how many responses I got.  Indeed, egg cartons are in high demand.  Regardless, the refusal by the East Bay Depot led to another item not making the cut.  Now the egg cartons go into mixed paper recycling.

But our system is still a bit complicated to explain to visitors.  There's compost (no longer city vs. garden); mixed paper; mixed recycling (generally glass and metal, but also plastic but only if it's #1 or #2 and narrow neck only); and landfill.  And even though egg cartons now go to recycling, we're still saving corks and empty CO2 cartridges (even though they never seem to believe me that they're not all N2O cartridges) for the East Bay Depot.  And empty strawberry plastic bins get turned in at the Farmers' Market.

Geez, sometimes we're such hippies.  I guess there's a reason we live in Berkeley.