Cloth bum!

where has my head been? haven't posted on here in an age!

But the answer to the question is I have been preparing for the baby growing in my belly and due to arrive in the material world in October. Wondering whether I will cope with pregnancy, labour, and a baby. That bit has come more recently when I started to wonder, "what does a baby do?"

I have also been contemplating the environmental impact of having a baby and how to minimise this. As a cloth pad user, who doesn't use wipes or cotton wool but rather muslins and reusable fleece pads it is natural that I would want to use cloth nappies and reusable wipes.

I have no idea which nappies I should use yet, although i am veering towards some sort of pre-fold/muslin or terry with a wrap of some sort for the first couple of months, and then some one-sized nappies for the rest of the way to potty I think. However, I already know as a cloth pad user that purchasing pretty cloth is addictive, and the desire to have new and fancy prints is a difficult one to fight. So I think i will end up with a few of a lot of different types.

Anyone have any experience of cloth bumming they would like to share?

In the meantime I am perusing as many sites and looking at as many different types as I can.

This is one site that has been recommended to me by lots of people, so will be looking to get some stuff from them:
http://cheeksandcherries.blogspot.com/

we had a white christmas, and a green christmas!

It snowed on christmas day, for maybe the first time in my entire life! We already had snow on the ground, then it snowed just past midnight, we were still up and saw it, and so we had the snow in the garden, and about a quarter of an inch of fresh snow. Apparently bookies paid out on bets of white christmas in nottingham.

So one colour was fixed, what about the other? Green?

Of course the ultimate green christmas would have been sitting in the dark without a christmas tree eating food foraged or gained freganistically meditating or something.

Obviously I didn't take things that far, but I made some green choices where I could.

• we ate vegetarian (as I always do, but some of the other 7 wouldn't normally)


• I home cooked a vegan loaf to reduce a) animal products and b) packaging and processing costs


• I bought all veg british and where possible locally grown


• I have already talked about the ethical dilemma I had with the christmas tree and how i resolved this (I bought a real tree in a pot which I intend to keep for next year and beyond)


• all my decorations are made of natural materials, no plastic whatsoever (although to be fair, at least part of this is aesthetics!)


• I didn't buy a single card or piece of wrapping paper - I made cards (although I did use new card, but hopefully people will like them and treasure them), and I used pre-used paper

I bought people ethical gifts where possible -

• my husband got a recycled bicycle tyre belt and


• some recycled computer keyboard cufflinks!


• My mum got a fair trade afghan blown glass wine glass

People also know I like these things too, and I received a ring made from a teaspoon handle, and some table mats and coasters made from recycled fireman's hose.

I also received Leo Hickman's book - A Life Stripped Bare, Anthony Gidden's Politics of Climate Change and Time Out's Great Train Journey's of the World. I did a train holiday this year and believe this is without a doubt the ultimate way forward.

To improve my green christmas for next year i need to:

• reduce produced items such as real eat roast


• buy fairtrade crackers (if I had known about these before I bought mine I would have bought them, but I already had some. Of course some people say that crackers are a terrible bane for the environmentalist, this is somehting I shall have to think about. I did put all the recyclables in the recycling though)


• more green presents for others


• less electric lighting and more candles


• cards made from recycled materials


• reuse this year's tree

Reusable versus disposable?

Normally the reusable versus disposable debate also features the natural versus man-made debate. So resuable nappies are made of cotton, bamboo or hemp whereas disposable are made of plastic. Menstrual pads the same. This somehow makes the question easier to answer... natural = good, reusable = good, job's a good'n!

Except of course it is more complex than that. There is the debate about how natural is natural, especially in the cases of bamboo and hemp, and also about the energy costs for reusable.

That is for another post though as today's post is about a different sort of disposable versus reusable - Christmas trees.

As a child we always had a real tree, and I love the smell and look of real trees, I actually find fake trees a little depressing and pointless. Well that isn't fair, I don't really, but I would if I had one in my house. I think I would rather not bother. As an adult I have not had a Christmas tree, but this year we are having people round on Christmas day (green-eyed does Christmas!) and I would like a tree. I would like a real tree. But then there is the quandary over the real tree and so I was considering a fake tree.

So real trees are natural, and natural equals good, right? Well maybe not. They are a big crop, could that ground be used to grow food crops? Maybe in some cases, but would it? Maybe, maybe not. They can also be grown in ground which is not suitable for other crops. More importantly they are sprayed with Roundup. Roundup, the pesticide which causes the most poisoning and death. Hrmmm. I could buy an organic tree, if only I could find one!

So then, maybe I should buy a reusable tree, less waste, no removal quandaries. Once it has got to me that is it in terms of energy expenditure. No pesticides. Just petrochemicals. Probably quite a lot of tree miles as well. Plus I would have to use it for many years as they can't be recycled, and I do hate landfill.

Most green sites suggest you shouldn't get a real tree. They don't really say what you should do though. No tree I guess. That's not very festive though is it? I feel like I should be able to have a tree. But then do I come back to that perennial problem, I do as much green stuff as I can therefore it is OK to fly round the world and back again.

Harrumph. I feel like a tree should be a possibility, I will be sharing my Christmas with 7 others as well. It will be my first tree since being an adult.

I think I have left it too late to get a real tree anyway. But that aside, I think i have decided to try and get a small real tree in a pot, which I will then keep in a pot and reuse next year.