Wa$ted!

I know this is a sewing and crafting blog but I need to confess that I have a new addiction - Wa$ted! Wa$ted is a TV programme (Tuesday nights on Tv#3) like no other, and I love it - the aim of the show is to profile local families and their generally appalling eco-habits, in an attempt to help them to reduce waste, recycle, and save money. I have to admit that I've become a bit of an eco-warrier recently, thanks in part to the show, but also as a result of starting to feel more and more concerned about making sure that we look after the natural resources we have, and that resources are available for future generations.

Some ideas we're implementing?

• From 3kg's, Baby Peanut's getting cloth nappies - thanks to Real Nappies. We've decided to start out with disposables for our sanity, but will switch to cloth as soon as we can.
  
• CeeJae's lunch and any leftover's are packed in airtight containers, rather than nasty old gladwrap.
• Cloth bags for grocery shopping.
  
• Quick showers for everyone, and one bath a week for CeeJae.
• Recycling dry pull-ups (in fact as CeeJae is dry 6 mornings out of 7, we're going to do away with the pull-ups at the end of the current packet).
• We plan to replace the moisture inducing gas heaters in the house with convection or electric heaters before winter arrives.
• Energy conserving lightbulbs are installed in the main lounge area - and we said goodbye to the dimmer to do this.
• More walking = less petrol consumption (and good for growing boys and expanding Mummy's!).
• Cold water washes - which we've always done - and minimal use of the dryer - which we've always done too. We installed a washing line in the garage, which was great last winter, especially as the garage heats up significantly with the smallest amount of warm weather and sunshine.
  

My favourite part of the show is actually the eco-calculator which I have just located on the Wa$ted website - and I am delighted to report that all the cold washes, recycling, and quick showers are worth it as our eco-footprint is only 4x the size of our section! Not that we'll be complacent about that - although I am horrified to see some people on the show with eco-footprints up to 25x their section...scary stuff. So, why not grab your rates bill and your electricity bill and find out your own eco-footprint - and get saving!

Reduce, re-use, recycle, folks! Oh and more sewing soon - I promise!