I've been promising a giveaway for too long! Here it is and like I said, its NOT soap = )
After raving about Breezy Babies wonderful fitted bamboo diapers I thought a diaper would be perfect for my first Green Giveaway. Included in this giveaway will be a Breezy Babies diaper, pins and 6 beautiful, soft, flannel wipes made by yours truly!
I know many of my readers don't have kids in diapers anymore, but this would also make a great gift. If you have ever considered trying cloth diapers, this is a great way to start. All you need is a simple cover (I use nylon pants) and you have a wonderful alternative to disposable diapers. Even substituting 1 diaper every other day will make a difference in your budget and the amount of trash you dispose of each week.
Sooooo, here are the rules. Give me your favorite way to reduce*reuse*recycle in the comments section. If you'd like a chance to enter again, mention my green giveaway on your blog and then email me at vintagefreshsoap(at)gmail.com to let me know. I will pick the winner next Thursday the 25th. The winner will need to email me to let me know what size diaper you want.September 19-29 has been declared the Etsy Real Diaper week by the Etsy cloth diaper team so Breezy Babies is having some special sales. If cloth diapering is something you've wanted to try, now is a great time to buy! Be sure to stop by and see her goodies = )
72 comments:
Without a doubt the biggest way our family reduces*reuses*recycles is using cloth diapers. We never compromise on this choice. When it comes to traveling, sickness or babysitters cloth is the only diaper we use! We take cloth a little further by not using disposable wipes, paper towels or napkins in our home. When guests come over for dinner they get a velour/sherpa cloth wipe!
Thank you for this giveaway, Heidi! I love spreading the word of cloth diapering to as many families as possible. If I don't win this beautiful diaper I would like to contact the WAHM for a possible review on my website.
God Bless!
Autumn Beck
http://allaboutclothdiapers.com
My favorite way to reduce, reuse, recycle is my compost pile. It has decreased the amount of stuff that goes in my trash can by half and the great compost helps my little garden every year.
I'm also excited about this giveaway because I just found out I'm pregnant for the first time and am very interested in using cloth diapers when the time comes!
Gosh, I feel like we do a ton to RRR, so I don't know that I have a favorite method.
We always use both sides of papers. We use a little cup for holding water for brushing our teeth (we don't run the water). We have our own SIGG bottles that we take filtered water in when we go out, so we don't buy the bottled stuff. We compost anything that the chickens don't eat. We use leaves as mulch (dh is aghast when he sees people bag up yard wastes to go in the trash). We use totally worn clothing as rags. We alsmost always try to take one vehicle into town and time our errands on the same trips. We don't mow much of our 27 acres so we don't waste fossil fuels on trimming a monoculture.
Uh oh, sorry, I'm going on and on...LOL!
And I'm posting your giveaway on my blog today!
This is one terrific giveaway!!!!!!
yeah...this is a great way to try it out!
So, here are some of my green things...
1. eating food we grow
2. garbage - recycle plastic, metal, glass, burning paper, and composting organics.
3. I use my wipes boxes to hold plastic bags (which i reuse as garbage liners) to refill my garbage cans.
4. i love not only thrift store shopping for myself but taking all of the things we can't use there or Freecycle.com...love it!
We have stopped buying bottled water, we use totes at the supermarket, we take short showers and we recycle, most of the time. Because we live in an apartment with no line drying space or washer hook up, we have foung it much less complicated to use disposable diapers. I want to do cloths at least part of the time!
Hmmm, reduce, reuse and recycle. What do I do?
I try to walk everywhere - reducing the gas consumption in our car. I use soapnuts for washing instead of polluting the waters with chemical-laden detergents. I use tinfoil in the dryer instead of Bounce sheets. I take reuseable bags to the grocery store instead of getting more plastic ones.
I cloth diaper which saves on putting more sposies in the landfills. I recycle cardboard, plastic containers, newspapers etc.
Thanks for such a great giveaway!
Definitely our biggest way to help the earth is by using veggie oil to power our main car - my hubby's Jetta.
He has a VW Jetta TDI, which is a diesel, with a "Grease Kit." It is a modification to the fuel system which allows him to use biodiesel (made from 100% veggies) in his main tank, and burn used vegetable oil in his 2nd tank. He collects oil from restaurants in the area - free! His car gets 1000 miles between fill ups of biodiesel.
It has saved us tons of money, and burning biodiesel and veggie oil reduces carbon emissions by a lot, not to mention saving oil drilling and all that brings!
We use homemade reusable grocery bags, new KKs (yeah!), family cloth, cloth towels instead of paper. We also compost and try to eat local grown produce. There is so much to do, but our biggest thing is using reusable when possible.
reuse, recycle!
probably our biggest contributions are that we use cloth diapers, wipes and grocery bags. we also like to shop/donate at thrift stores and use freecycle as well. plastic bags (on rare occasions that we get them) are reused for wet swimsuits or diapers, or reused many times for whatever needs to be toted. every little green contribution helps!!
My favorite to reduce, reuse, and recycle is definitely cloth diapers. To further the 3 R's, I use primarily recycled materials (old clothing, sheets, towels, etc.) to sew most of my own.
Breastfeeding:) No bottles, no packages, no energy to heat them, no extra water:) I think we have also saved on medicines as my kids have been relatively healthy with extended breastfeeding:)
Our favorite was to reduce is our composter. As soon as we started using it we noticed that our trash was cut in half (or more!) Plus in the spring we will have to great soil to use in our garden. Its a win/win!
We breastfeed (In 15 years of breastfeeding we've never needed a baby bottle!) and cloth diaper, but the biggest way we RRR is that we don't buy new clothes! All our clothes come from garage sales or Goodwill. We recycle even more as we pass them down among our 6 kids and pass along the still good ones to bless other when we are done with them.
I will be CDing, using cloth wipes; getting into the CD research has opened my eyes to other ways, as well, around the house; mama pads and Diva cups, nonpaper paper towels; we compost and garden, and instead of using ziplock baggies, I reuse tupperware containers, and buy the "homemade" sandwich baggies ;)
Will be posting this on my blog today, too!
Definetly can't improve upon what any of the ladies mentioned above. Breastfeeding, cloth diapering (and cloth in so many other areas), thrift shopping, etc. are some of our biggest contributions to the green scene. :o)
Each year at Christmas time, I would spend hours wrapping presents only to see it ripped open and the wrapping thrown away. Last Christmas, I wrapped nearly all of our Christmas presents in reusable fabric gift wrap and bags (that I made myself!). Everyone was really excited and proudly folded their wrapping up and promised to use it this year. I can't wait to see if I get some fabric wrapped gifts this holiday season!
I would love to be entered in your generous Breezy Babies fitted giveaway. We just love using cloth diapers - some of ours are so well-loved that they are falling apart so it would be fun to get a brand new soft squishy one :)
-Monique
mnlefty (at) gmail (dot) com
another way to be green on the same line as cloth diapers is cloth Pads! I'll never go back to disposable!
Two words: Diva Cup.
I definitely R*R*R* in my everyday life! I have recycling bins at home and at work . . I have taught my children the importance of recycling and living green . . I cloth diaper my 4 month old son . . Instead of throwing stuff away, I look for ways that they can be re-used . . Etc. . . I love this contest . . CDing your baby is the best!!
we try to always buy something use before shopping new. we also, of course, cloth diaper. using the same dipes for three kids so far has really saved us money, as well as saving a lot of trash!
There are many things that we do, and our province has an amazing recycling / compost pick up program that I am SO thankful for. We use cloth diapers most of the time, get 99.9% of our clothes and household goods second hand (SO much more fun than buying new!) and I make all of our own cleaners. And soap, of course! :) And on and on the list goes... I could write a book!
Well probably the biggest thing we do is use cloth diapers, but another thing I like to do is take old clothes that have holes, stains, etc and make kid's clothing out of them.
We refuse to buy packaged stuff.
We ONLY eat our homemade food, no prepared packed foods from the store. We have very little trash or recycle!
And whatever packing material enters out home is used to store things around the house or is made into fun toys for our 13 month old son (in homemade cloth dipers) :0)
When my Mom visits she discovers table salt in a vitamin bottle; my homemade dry skin balm in a honey container (they also look similar); stuff like rice, oats and beans in sour cream containers... :0)
Some of the ways we RRR are
1)Recycle everything possible. If I can't curb side recycle something I drive it to the recycle center.
2)We're members of a local CSA
3)I use baking soda as shampoo and deodorant
4) only buy clothing and toys from the thrift store.
5)hang dry all clothes. I have a family of 6 so this isn't as easy as it sounds especially on the days I hang 50+ socks:)
I'd love to win this for a friend who just had a baby. I've been trying to convince her to use cloth, I think this might push her to at least try it, even if it's only 1 diaper a day.
ntrenary@yahoo.com
My two favorite ways we reduce/reuse are cloth diapers (most of which I've made myself, and many from old clothing) and composting.
To beat a dead horse: cloth diapering rocks our house. We also like gathering all our old plastic shopping bags and taking them back to the store. My son always reminds us!
Wow, what a great giveaway! Well, we cloth diaper (yay!), we rarely buy things new (this is my favorite), and we try to use "green" cleaners. Would love to compost...maybe when we buy a house!
I've just recently started really trying to RRR more, and with each new thing I want to try something more! I've been breastfeeding for 9.5 months now, cd'ing for 5mo and even more recently started using cloth wipes, cloth pads, reusable grocery bags, making my own, safe dishwashing and laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, shampoo and conditioner...about to start making my own soap. There's so much out there to do! once we move into a house the possibilities are even more endless! I love reading what other people are doing--great motivation to do more!
Oooh, I'd love to try a bamboo diaper!
One big thing that we do in our home is we don't buy any paper products. We use cloth napkins and terry cloth wipes as toilet paper. We use hankies not tissues. We use towels not paper towels, we use knit dish cloths not sponges, and of course cloth diapers, not disposables.
We have really been trying to R/R/R over the past year. We use cloth diapers, wipes, unpaper towels, mama cloth, and canvas bags. We also save energy by using daylight and line-drying. Not only are these simple changes Earth friendly but we have saved a lot of money! Thanks for the chance at winning!
The biggest thing we do is cloth diapering. I always thought it would be too hard, too much work. Once you get started it is so easy! I feel that I am doing what is best for my children as well as the environment by cloth diapering!
Bar rags, no question. We don't use paper towels any more, I got a big pack of bar rags from Sam's, they are cheap, reusable, and I don't care if they get stained.
what a fun giveaway!
ashley stout
sorry forgot my tip...we love reusable grocery bags for everything! baking soda and vinegar have also found highly useful positions in our home!
The biggest thing I do is to walk and take skytrain to my destinations whenever possible. We purposely live close to a skytrain station for me to get to work and for our future kids.
We also recycle everything we can, use our own grocery bags, cloth diaper, and buy used clothing.
Now that we recently bought a house, the next thing on my list is to have a compost in the backyard - yay!
Well these are a couple of the thing we do to reduce recycle
-We have stopped drinking bottled water and instead invested in a water filter system. On the go we use thermos sippys.
-We reuse gift boxes as also postal boxes.
-We take our own grocery bags to the store.
-With the plastic bags at home, we use them for garbage. We also recycle them.
-We use cloth diapers, cloth wipes and thats a great way.
-I wash my dipes at home and the last rinse of water goes to my plants.
-We use ebay/craigslist/freecycle to buy/sell.
Old clothes are used around the house as rags. Clothes that are wearable are given to charities.
Thanks for the lovely giveaway. More importantly, I hope people get new ideas from reading posts like this. Well, all this goes a long way to making the earth we live in a beautiful place.
What a nice giveaway! We don't have just one favorite way to recycle - we strive every day to make our lives a little greener, so here's our list of our favorite ways to be greener:
- cloth diapering with bamboo (renewable, sustainable, and grown without chemicals) and line drying
- breastfeeding
- composting
- growing our own organic edibles
- I use a menstrual cup and cloth pads instead of disposables
- FREECYCLE! :)
What a great giveaway!
I love cloth diapers.
My way of being green is cloth diapering and cloth wipes. I'm addicted and am planing on trying some more green products :-)
Our family works hard on instilling the reduce, reuse, recycle theme into our children by reading stories about recycling (our fave is "Recycle", by Gail Gibbons). Now that we all understand where the recycling goes and how it is reused, we all make the extra effort to make sure it gets recycled. We also use cloth diapers, earth friendly cleaning products and cloth shopping bags. Our favorite hobby is visiting local farmer's markets and trying to always eat as locally as possible!
the favorite way that we reduce and reuse is by using cloth diapers. i live in a community where people think i'm crazy for doing this! my mother at first thought i was as well, btu then she saw my love for it, when she was by us for a week. i think it's so much more environmentaly friendly and even healthier, i just luv it. we also like to use our regular homemade products to make cleaning products. i use soap nuts to do everythin at home!
We cloth diaper, breastfeed, use mama pads, reuse plastic bags, recycle. We've also been trying to cut down on electicity - after the crazy bills this summer! We moved into the basement so we dont have to use the AC as much. I've been line drying my dipes and shopped consignment. Thanks for the contest!
Favorite ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle in our home are growing our own veggies, using cloth diapers and wipes, making our own earth-friendly cleaning products, using green bags at the grocery store, switching to compact fluourescent bulbs, using a rain barrel for watering plants, and turning off all lights when not in use. It's amazing how all of these little things can add up towards contributing to a greener planet. Thank you so much for sponsoring this give-away. Hopefully this will help propel the cloth diaper movement!!
We use cloth diapers & wipes. My daughter who is potty trained also uses cloth wipes instead of toilet paper. What a great giveaway!!!
By getting rid of paper towels! Our large family used to go through 1 jumbo roll a day. We tried flannel but didn't love them until I made birdseye ones in beautiful hand dyed colors. I love them so much that I opened an Etsy store and started selling them.
Kerri
AthenaCreates.etsy.com
The best way we RRR, is by far cloth diapering. I am new to it, my son is 3 months old and I love it. I wish I would have done it with my daughter. We also do so many other things, compost, cloth bags, washable swiffer pads, making all our bread, growing our own food, chickens, etc. etc.
Danielle
One of our biggest ways to RRR is using cloth diapers. :-) Also, Brestfeeding, growing a lot of our own food, composting, buying second hand clothes and sewing what we can't find.
We use cloth diapers, cloth wipes, and even "family cloth" for our, er, milder pottying usage. But on top of that, we enjoy recycling old clothes *into* those products - t-shirts into diapers, baby bath towels into cloth wipes, sweaters into wool covers...
I think my favorite thing is cloth shopping bags. They hold so much more and don't ever rip :)
We do lots of little things-- cloth diapering, recycling a good bit or our "trash," buy items with minimal packaging if possible, use grocery totes, plant native plants in our garden to reduce water and fertilizers, buy used items when feasible, support local business, and organize errands to reduce use of gasoline and exhaust.
Thanks, Lee
My favorite way to recycle, reduse and reuse is by using my family's old worn out or grown out of clothing to make new things like new clothing, diapers, wipes, bags, just about anything I can think of. I get so much more out of it then just hoping someone picks it up at the thrift store.
i think the biggest thing we do is cloth diaper... i try to make things out of stuff before i toss it if it isnt goodwill worthy! my other fav is the cloth bags for grocery shopping! i have become quite addicted! i also no longer buy tissue (i use a hankie) and i dont buy paper napkins or plastic bags (like ziplock)... if something i buy comes in a container i can use later for food storage or holding craft supplies i use it! well i think ill stop now i could go on for a while! :P
My favorites are the small things that areso easy but add up. Things like reusing cloth napkins and not paper towels, and carrying your own shopping bags are so easy. They are also easy to convince other people to do.
a peak AT hotmail. com
Oh neato idea! By the looks of it, I'm obviously not the only person who'd love to try your goodies!
Our RRR favorite is to never through a box out that meets one of two (or both) criteria:
1.) Just the right size to be a storage box somewhere around the house, depending on what/where/how something's going to be stored.
2.) Just the right size to mail something off to someone!
Otherwise, boxes that are waaaaaay to big, or just too small, are put in the recycle bin. That doesn't happen often though, the last box that was doomed to the end-of-the-line recycle bin was binned back in March. My mom even still uses for storage the moving company boxes from the company that shipped our belongings back to the US from Asia back in 1994!
We use cloth diapers and shop at Goodwill. We want to start using reusable bags at grocery and retail stores. -Amy & Sarah
We use cloth diapers & wipes, are considering a switch to family cloth, I use cloth menstrual/post-partum pads, we have not-paper towels, we melt down old/broken crayons into new ones, I make as much from scratch as possible (from toys & clothing to food & drinks), we use only sourdough starter instead of commercial yeast, take reusable bags to the grocery store, and I'm learning to make my own beauty/healthcare products! I don't think that we could do any one thing differently now.
Having single stream recycling in our community is my favorite. Everything just goes in the bin. Our two year old is so used to what gets trashed and what gets recycled that if I flake and he sees me, he calls me on it. I love it.
I also cloth diaper and love how it has cut down on our trash with two in diapers. It is wonderful not having to worry about catching the garbage men because, eh, not much has really piled up.
Perhaps selfish favorites, but it works! Oh and those fabric grocery bags are so much nicer than paper or plastic. I love them!
Here are the ways we are green:
Today I made "snack sacks" for my kids' snacks instead of using ziplocks!!
We have cloth diapered for over a year now!
We hang our diapers to dry, we use biodegradable laundry detergent (made by a WAHM).
We recycle all of our glass as well as plastics and papers.
We switched out nearly all of our lightbulbs in the house.
Oh this is so cool - and as an aside, I'm sure all of your readers would jump at the chance to win some wonderful soap too.
We use cloth diapers - its amazing how soft and wonderful they feel when compared to disposables.
We do quite a bit of reusing/recycling and also have all HE appliances and cf lightbulbs but I think one thing that stands out quite a bit is us reusing containers that products come in - a metal cookie tin is my sewing kit, the pretty cloth covered cardbord boxes that held bath products (gifts) now hold recipes in the kitchen, photos on the coffee table, and diapering accessories in the nursery. A computer box (has a lid like the boxes that hold reams of printing paper) was wallpapered, and is used as a night table slash out of season clothing storage. There are a lot of other examples around the house, but this email is getting long. Mom always did this (to save money maybe) but my sisters and I all do this because it never occured to us to do things any other way. Why would you throw these packages into the landfill, then go buy something to do the same job?
We try to do our part by breastfeeding, full-time cloth diapering, bluebox recycling (glass, tin cans and paper). We read newspapers and magazines on line or borrow them from the library. We buy second hand, repurpose clothing that is wearing out and donate the rest to charitable organizations. We compost yard and garden waste too.
Christine P
We always reuse and recycle all paper that comes in from the schools with my girls. They either use it to draw on the reverse side first, I use it in the printer if something needs to be printed, or it gets recycled.
Another way I love to reduce waste is to recycle those plastic grocery bags you inevitably get from the grocer. I also have started using those reusable canvas bags when I go shop.
I am new to the "green" world but I have to say it all started with switching from pump soap to bar soap and then on to hang drying my laundry, cloth diapers, canning, reusable bags, handkerchiefs, not going out to eat, no take out, no to go coffee, learning to distinguish between a want and a need, buying used clothing. All in all, learning to live like my granparents used to live!
I don't know if it's the best, but it's the funnest way we RRR. I crochet plastic grocery bags into other things. Like shopping bags, necklaces, rugs, totes, ect. I really enjoy it, just because I love to crochet and it reuses the bags in a more fun way. We also use family cloth, cloth napkins, diapers/wipes, compost, and make our own cleaning supplies.
Hi! I agree - cloth diapering is definitely my family's biggest eco-contribution! I was astounded at the amount of waste (including wasted money) that disposable diapers create! Not to mention that my daughter loves to "waste" diapers (i.e. letting me change her diaper only to immediately repeat her bodily function!).
I'll be sure to mention this giveaway on my blog!
Oh, Oh, Oh I would love to enter your contest. My daughter recently switched over to using cloth all the time and is so hooked!
The best "eco" switch I made was making my own "swifter" sheets out of fleece. I have lots of pets and lots of hard surface floors. I love to use my swifter sweeper but hated spending all that money on the sheets. So I cut up some fleece I had in my fabric stash into the proper size and I now can "swifter" to my hearts content!
:-) Rosie
Hi the ways that we RRR are:
1. Cloth Diapers and soon to be Cloth Wipes.
2. Recycle bags, plastics, and cans
3. Teaching our children why it is importaint to recycle and tuen the water off when you brush your teeth :)
4. Using milk jugs as planters.
Thanks!
Mary
I recycle by using cloth diapers and wipes. I use recycle t-shirts in my diapers when I have some I don't wear no more and I recycle wool sweaters too. I try to recycle as much as possible.
One of the biggest changes we made to RRR was switching to cloth diapers, and it turns out they're SO much more enjoyable to use than disposables! That and eliminating paper towels almost completely from our cleanup routine.
Great giveaway, thanks!
My favorite thing to do is go garage selling! Super fun and a great way to reuse! I also have recently switched to cloth diapering which is both good for the environment and super cute! I have switched from using paper towels**all the time** literaly to using washclothes. And thats a big one for me! I love being able to helo the environment so our kids can have a great place to live too! And teaching them how to super savy in recycling!
great giveaway!
Our new way of helping out is we have started a composte pile. Also to burn anything that can be burnt instead of shipping it away to the dump. My hubby also buys almost all of his shirts at goodwill or thrift shops to help and reuse items. (And we help our pockets! )
Thanks for having such a good giveaway!
Hi my favorite way to reduce reuse and recycle is to garbage picking good baby items (ie baby bath tubs, crib matresses, etc). Whatever the neighbors are throwing away that week. I take them home and clean them up. Then I take them over to the Crisis Pregnancy Center and donate them to moms in need.
Hi! I just post that last comment no idea why it acme up anonymous??? I must of clicked something wrong...sorry. It was from me:-) Gina
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