Reduce Your Family’s Carbon Footprint: Blog Action Day

As part of Blog Action Day ’09, I am writing about ways to reduce your carbon footprint.  By definition, having a family meansthat you are creating a larger carbon footprint on this earth than you would have if you were one single person.  People consume resources, all which contribute to carbon emissions.  It can be hard to decide where to start and how to minimize the carbon footprint that your growing family creates.

Here is a top 10 list of things that can be done by a new family to reduce their carbon footprint, and educate their children to do the same:

1. Recycle everything. If your recycling center does not take it find another use for the item, pass it on to someone who will use it, you last option should be throwing something away.

2. Accept hand-me-downs.  Not only is it better on your wallet, but you are saving the resources that would be needed to create all new clothing and toys.

3. Use cloth diapers. Cloth diapers drastically reduce the amount of waste that piles up in our landfills.  Disposable diapers take 500 years to decompose and it takes 8 barrels of crude oil to create the plastic used in diapers for just 1 child.

4.  Use cloth wipes.  Cloth wipes go hand-in-hand with cloth diapers, so if you are using one, you should be using the other.

5. Make your own organic baby food. Use locally grown fruits and veggies that will not only be healthier and fresher for your baby, but will also require less fuel to bring them to you!  The organic farmers are not using harmful pesticides, which are unhealthy for baby and bad for the planet.

6.  Breastfeed. When formula is used to feed your baby, it requires many natural resources to create the formula, including coes and the land that they graze on.  Formula also requires loads of plastic, paper and metal for packing, which leads to waste, toxins and landfill build-up.  When choosing to breastfeeding, the only container you need is your breast.

7. Eat Less Meat. I’m not suggesting go vegan or vegetarian because that would be hypocritical, since I eat meat.  If you are a meat eater and do not want to go the vegetarian route, try to east less, maybe have one or two days/week with no meat.  As less meat is consumed, less livestock will be raised, and therefore cause less environmental harm over years and decades.  It is also beneficial if you decide to cut red meat and pork from your diet as large mammal require much more resources to raise and process for food.  I also buy the majority of my meat from local farms so that I know that the animals were raised ethically and I require less fuel consumption to have the dinner on my plate than if I were to buy from a grocery store.

8. Use eco-friendly cleaning supplies. The harmful chemicals found in many commercial cleaning products are not only harmful to our health and babies health but, these products create additional strains on water reclamation systems, eventually alter the natural water table and make a substantial impact on our planet’s water quality.

9. Take part in eco-friendly activities. Rather than using battery powered toys, watching TV and playing video games, have your child explore the outdoors, or use their creativity indoors with toys such as wooden blocks or even cardboard boxes (also a great was to re-use trash).

10. Pass on the word. I started this blog so that I could reach out to more people about raising a baby in a more “green” way.  Please pass on the word to other mothers and fathers.  The more people are knowledgeable about what they can do, the greater a reduction on our earths resources can be made.

Please visit the Blog Action Day ’09 website to read about more ways to reduce Climate Change.

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