Environmentally Friendly Ramblings

I'm trying to do my best to be more environmentally friendly, it's hard to comprehend this recent research article on plastic grocery bags:

-A Plastic bag takes 450 years to biodegrade. Imagine 10 billion of them!
-The production of Paper bags causes 70% more pollution than Plastic.
-When Plastic "photo degrades" it ends up in our oceans. Incidentally, it appears much like a plankton, and is then consumed by fish. Fish eat it, and it winds up on your dinner table.
-The recipe for making paper bags starts with 1 part pulp, 400 parts WATER. What a waste of water!
-The recycling of plastic emits heavy metals into the air causing extreme air pollution
-An average person will use over 350 bags in a single year!
-In New York City, one less grocery bag per person would reduce waste by 5 million pounds and save $250,000 in disposal costs!

You can order bags, one popular brand is Baggu... there are cute bags like this available in most stores now, target sells some, and there's also this site and this site that offers fairly low cost bags! I found some super cute ones by doing a search on Etsy , and yesterday while in the checkout like I saw another mom sporting her re-usable bags by Skeeda. One time cost, for a serious impact on our part. It's well worth it.

We're buying mostly organic foods, it's not always cost friendly, so it's not always possible. I clip coupons, subscribe to brand newsletters online and received free product coupons, and I cost compare. I can buy organic milk for my family for the same price as store brand most of the time by simply visiting the organic manufacturer's website and printing a instant coupon! I'm a frugal shopper, and it's paying off in more then one way! I use Method cleaning products (they have re-usable bags also), and have bought Clorox Greenworks to give that a try also. Whichever is on sale, that's what we'll get.

I also read alot about product ingredients on shampoo's, soaps, etc., now; I'm interested in knowing what each additive is. I recently received information on Quaternium-15 and it's possible effects. Isn't it a bit scary that 90% of every infant shampoo and soap that I had contained this. The words "acts as a formaldehyde releaser" was enough for me. I'm not easily pulled into trends, but this one hit home. A built in allergen in baby wash, wow. Some of the products I had included higher doses of this preservative. We're now using organic bathing products, Target sells Nature Babycare and it's in the same price range as all other baby products and w/o any chemical additives, they even offer a line of diapers that are priced the same as Pampers/Huggies. When it comes to bath soaps and shampoo's, I'm personally a huge fan of Berts Baby Bee's, so I watch for sales and buy that in bulk!

I look at it like this, I'm super careful to make sure my kids are playing safe and buckled in the car safe - I should be equally concerned about what goes in and on their bodies.

Thanks for reading my ramblings!!