Ecominded Mama

Buy replacement parts

I was in a baby store shopping for a gift for my friend the other day, and I happened to notice that they sold replacement valves for the sippy cups my daughters use. They didn't have what I needed -- replacement tops for those same sippy cups, which our dog chewed on -- so I looked online, and voila! Playtex sells sippy cup tops individually. It would never have occurred to me to look online for replacement parts for things like sippy cups, but buying just the part I was missing instead of a whole new cup saved me money and saved the three lidless sippy cups I had from going in the garbage (they aren't labeled for recycling). I'm going to remember this in the future when just a part of something breaks -- why buy a whole new one when I can replace the broken part?

Your garbage v. my garbage

I had a very interesting conversation with a friend yesterday on a most unexpected topic: garbage. I have no idea how we came to discuss it, but in the end we decided that her family produces about twice as much garbage as my family does. We are both married with two similarly-aged kids (and both, it's important to note, ecominded), but my family typically has one garbage can of trash per week (with two or three tall kitchen bags inside, to be specific) and her family typically has two cans. Without sorting through our actual garbage to see the differences, we talked about what generally gets thrown out and what gets recycled and there were no discernible differences between us. We ultimately determined that the difference was a result of the types of packaging we bought our products in -- she generally buys in small or "standard" quantities and I generally buy in bulk. I buy jugs of juice and serve it to the kids in (reusable) sippy cups; she buys juice boxes. She buys snack packs of crackers (like goldfish crackers) and I buy the gigantic 2.5+ pound box and serve them to the kids in a bowl. We were amazed at how much of a difference the packaging could make in the amount of garbage we generate. How does your garbage measure up?

Minimizing canned goods

My girls are bean lovers -- black, brown, white... they love them all -- so I put them in everything and make at least one pot of chili or bean soup each week. I used to stock up on canned beans every week, sometimes buying 12 cans at a time (more if they were on sale), but I realized recently that I'd save a ton of money by buying a one-pound bag of dried beans for $1.50 and cooking them myself instead of 6 cans of beans for $9 . (I won't go into recipes here, but trust me -- they're super easy to make.) And as with most things, I discovered that saving money and being eco-friendly often go hand-in-hand -- in this instance, I save at least $7 per week ($364 per year!) at the grocery store and I eliminate the need to add 6 cans to my recycling bin.

Reusable containers instead of plastic bags

I used to send my 4-year-old daughter to preschool with her snacks in plastic sandwich bags, but a few weeks ago I decided to try the Take & Toss plastic containers, hoping that she'd bring them home in her snack bag each day so we could reuse them but not quite sure if she'd remember to. But she has -- every day! I've cut my use of sandwich bags dramatically, and we haven't lost a single container or lid. I was so impressed by her ability to bring them home that I've started sending a real spoon on days when she takes yogurt or macaroni & cheese or other foods that require a spoon to eat them, and not one has been left at school.   

Klean Kanteen water bottles

The Klean Kanteen bottles I bought for the girls are a hit -- they love to drink out of them (I'm not sure why, exactly, but they do). My only complaint is that the ones I bought have the sports top, and it leaks if the girls turn it upside down and definitely if they shake it upside down if the cover is off (it doesn't leak when the cover is on, though).  If I come across some in my travels, I'm going to buy the nipple/sippy adapter caps -- I'm not quite ready to order them yet because we primarily use the bottles for water and a little spilled water doesn't bother me. If I decide to make the switch and get rid of all of our plastic sippy cups, though, I'll stock up on the adapter caps. 

I was curious about one thing, though: the plastic cap. Isn't it unsafe to have the girls suck on plastic? I checked the Klean Kanteen site, and they have a pretty reasonable answer (a steel cap might crack or break teeth if they got bumped by the cap) and a decent solution (you can buy a steel cap on their website). 

What's in an egg?

I haven't written about food much here, but it definitely figures into my environmental aspirations. We eat organic food whenever we can, and we also are huge fans of our local farmers market and the individual vendors that grow and sell fruits and vegetables and livestock in our general area. In an ideal world all of our food would come from our own garden or from the farms and gardens of our neighbors, but we don't even have a garden and neither do our immediate neighbors, so our local farmers market -- supplemented by our local grocery store -- has to suffice. 

One item we try to buy at the farmers market but often arrive too late to get are eggs (there's a lot of competition for them in our town!). So we buy them from the grocery store, and although the ones we typically buy aren't labeled organic, they claim to be from vegetarian-fed chickens that were not given artificial hormones or antibiotics. Some others claim to be "natural," "all-natural," "cage-free," and "naturally raised." Huh?!? Thankfully, I saw yesterday's NY Times article Sorting Through the Claims of the Boastful Egg that explains what all those similar-sounding terms mean.  

Refashioned giveaway

We went to see the ponies at Saratoga over Labor Day weekend (didn't win a dime, though), and we happened to go on "cooler bag" giveaway day (see the "before" picture at right). I initially thought that I shouldn't even take one because I don't need more logo-covered gear that I may or may not use, but having a cooler bag has been incredibly handy on preschool snack day in the past so I decided to pick one up. Since then I've had second thoughts -- could anything be more distasteful than sending a 4-year-old to school every day with a bag advertising a race track? 

But my daughter was really keen on the idea of it being her special snack bag, so I decided that I needed to figure out a way to cover up the logo. The bag is made of a nylon-type material, so I couldn't use iron-on patches, and using permanent markers to cover up the logo had an element of "defacing property" to it (another great message to send a child!). I finally settled on dimensional fabric paint. My daughter requested flowers, so I painted three on the front to cover up the logo (see the "after" pic at right... and no, I won't be offended if you laugh at my crafting skills) plus a heart on the side on the drink-holder compartment. It's still not quite as cute as I'd like it to be, but my daughter loves it and will happily use it every day, which is the best possible outcome. 

Sigg water bottle

I was a huge fan of the Nalgene bottle, so I was pretty upset when news reports came out that the plastic it's made from could be toxic. We still have a few bottles (mainly because I wasn't sure what to do with them -- mine can't be recycled), but we rarely use them anymore. I looked at some of the alternatives, but I wanted to avoid any plastic ones (out of fear they'd contain BPA or something else equally undesirable) and the metal ones seemed too expensive and heavy.

While we were on vacation we stopped in a Whole Foods and I saw a display of Sigg bottles, and I finally got to hold one for the first time. I equated "metal" with "heavy," but the Sigg bottles are made from aluminum so they're more soda can-ish in weight than soup pot-ish -- they are amazingly light. We bought two and have been using them for about a week, and they are fantastic. They keep cold things cold, don't leak (they say you can even put carbonated beverages in them without fear of leaking), and are pretty stylin' to boot. I'm going to look into replacing our sippy cups with the Sigg kids' versions... I only wish they weren't so expensive.