Best green parenting ideas

Hi everyone!

I was wondering if you could help me put together some of your favorite "Green Parenting" ideas or techniques. I'm realizing how much we've been wasting in our home and really trying to clean things up a bit. For example: Disposable Diapers! Wow, have we used a lot of those. The whole cloth diapering thing is interesting, but every time I try to dive in, I'm so overwhelmed. Which diapers do I chose? How many do I need? What cream can I use? Decisions, decisions...

Oh yes! Now here's a thread I'll definitely keep watching because I've had the same questions. I do what I can for the environment with the basics like recycling but there's so much more that I could be doing, and I know that... and feel bad about it!

Diapers... well, my daughter is no longer in diapers but I had the same concerns about the disposables and the huge amount of waste. I'm sad to say that I could never make myself get around to using cloth. I just had too busy of a lifestyle to have to deal with all that additional laundry... and knowing me, I probably convinced myself that I'd be wasting a lot of water washing the cloth diapers to prevent another kind of waste. My mind rationalizes things like that whether right or not.

In terms of trying to be green, I send my boys to school with reusable containers. Both their schools promote litterless lunches and they will even bring home banana peels or juice boxes so we can compost them at home or recycle at home. Their schools do have pretty go recycling programs for paper and cartons. I feel good about teaching our kids to take care of planet and to not be wasteful. I buy reusable drink containers for their juice or milk. It's not that hard to shift to buying things that are not prepackaged and save on money too.

There are so many ways to introduce your children to going green that ir is almost an obligation to in my opinion, and I think that that is a good thing. The kids really do love it too, and hopefully it will get them started thinking about the environment at an earlier age. Kids follow what they see and if you teach them what you are doing in recycling they will likely follow.

I had to try a few different brands of cloth diapers to find ones that "fit" my kiddo right - and funnily enough, some of the cheaper ones work far better than the more expensive ones! A couple of brands that worked well for us were Alva Baby and Kawaii Baby Diapers, which are two of the least expensive brands - but fit and absorbency were really good!

I guess things like hand me downs are also great and environmentally friendly (and budget friendly too - which is awesome!) Our neighbours have kids just older than our little one and gave us a bunch of barely used clothes for free - how great is that?!