- Good Morning!
So we just woke up
and now we're gonna get ready for the day.
(baby noises)
Yeah.
I'm Sara and I try to live zero waste with a baby.
Being zero waste to me means not using single use plastics,
getting my food in my own reusable containers
or from the farmer's market, package free.
And also composting all of my food waste.
I started on my zero waste journey about five years ago.
I also started a blog to chronicle all my experiences
to help other people on their journey as well.
And I opened a zero waste lifestyle shop.
A really common image of zero wasters today are,
you'll see them carrying some trash in a mason jar.
Which is definitely really admirable but I feel
can be very intimidating as well.
I definitely make more trash than what fits in a jar.
Sometimes my baby just wants to be attached to me all day
and I don't have time or energy to make my own food
so sometimes I'll have someone deliver food
but the effort behind reducing my waste,
I think is just as important.
In terms of a baby, it means using reusables instead
of disposables like diapers and wipes.
I'm really lucky that I can work part time from home
and I can breastfeed her, like on demand.
Right now it's pretty easy since she's only three months old
that she is just breastfed but I am already looking into
when she starts eating solids and planning for snacks
and things like that.
Hopefully I cannot use disposables there as well.
We didn't start out cloth diapering right when we got home
from the hospital.
I was actually really intimidated at first
because nobody taught me how to use cloth diapers.
I kinda just used YouTube videos and tutorials online
to figure it out.
But once we got into the habit of it, I really enjoyed it
because you're not constantly running out
and running out of diapers
and having to take out the trash all time
or having a trash can full of stinky diapers.
Instead I just do the laundry.
It's really easy.
It's not a more complicated way of doing laundry,
it's just like doing another load of laundry.
Here's my diaper caddy, I like to use pre-folds
and then here's the inserts and some cloth wipes.
You just fold this around the baby and then you can use
this thing here that has plastic clasps on it and that will
secure the pre-fold diaper onto her.
And then to finish it off, you just put a wool cover on top
and they also double as pants.
Wool, naturally is anti-bacterial and it wicks away
any moisture so you don't feel any dampness on the outside.
And then the soiled diaper,
I just throw into a wet bag right here and that's it.
Washing cloth diapers is really easy.
I just rinse them off,
you can rinse them with a bidet attached to your toilet
and then once you are ready to do a load,
you just put them in the washing machine,
you don't have to use any fancy detergent.
I probably do laundry for her diapers every other day.
Any time we've used like a disposable wipe,
you end up having to use so many of them.
I just use these like flannel pieces of fabric
and then I just wet them with water.
You end up saving so much money.
I mean you can go through a pack of wipes
like really quickly.
Any time I've put a disposable on her
and she goes number two,
it always ends up in a blowout and it goes up.
I've tried different brands, different sizes
and it's just, I don't know.
I've never had that issue with cloth diapers though.
They seem to absorb a lot more.
A typical day for us is we wake up in the morning
and I feed her.
Sometimes I will pump in the morning
and then give a bottle to my husband to feed her.
And then we play a little bit and change her diaper.
And kind of just repeat that all day.
(laughs)
It's nap time, she fell asleep on top of me
so I'll just be hanging out.
So she's got a clean diaper, clean clothes,
she's already taken her first nap so now I have her
in her carrier.
And we can do some errands around the house, some chores.
Now I'm gonna do a load of laundry
and it's all just in this wet bag here.
I don't have to touch anything, I just dump it all out.
Making some tea and some oats, just in case
I don't have a chance to make anything later on.
So I did a load of laundry and I made some food to eat,
I made some tea for myself and she ended up falling asleep
in the carrier so I'm going to do some work on the computer.
Okay, now we're at the farmer's market
and we're just gonna get some vegetables for the week.
Just finished up at the market.
I put everything in my reusable bags and my shopping cart
and I was also able to get a drink too.
Today I have a kale salad and also has some cabbage
and some roasted sweet potato
that I got from the farmer's market.
Then I made a lemon tahini dressing
and I'm just gonna top it off with some hemp hearts
that I bought in a large bag but not from in a bulk section,
just because it's harder for me to get to the grocery store
and fill all my bags.
Of course the hardest part is finding a time to eat it
because she's not happy right now.
Okay, so I just put her to bed and now I have some free time
to do whatever I want.
Being zero waste, the way that we are today
is not some sort of new concept.
Reusing and saving and buying second hand.
These are things that our grandparents have been doing
for generations.
Think about how I grew up and how I was so fortunate
to be able to go camping
and see all these great national parks
and experience nature and it worries me that she might not
get to experience those same things.
And I want to make sure that I'm doing things to preserve
the world around us, the way that I saw it.
(calming music)