Jennifer Moore Temple, owner of Buzzie Bee Diapers, cloth diaper service and supplies, will be featured on the nationally recognized, Maine-based weekly radio talk show, Back to Business. The show is scheduled to air Saturday August 4th, 2-4 PM, on 103.9 FM with rebroadcast on Wednesday August 8th at 8 AM. Back to Business is an interactive advice and news radio program geared specifically towards the creation and success of small businesses. Each week, host Deb Neuman features Maine business owners with a common theme. The August 4th will bring together Maine entrepreneurs who make a business out of making life easier for their customers.
Buzzie Bee Diapers’ mission is to make cloth diapering more accessible so that more midcoast families will chose cloth diapers. Based in Rockland and serving Knox, Waldo and Lincoln counties, Buzzie Bee Diapers believes and promotes the short and long-term benefits of cloth diapering, energy efficiency, green laundering, and doing business locally. For more information about Buzzie Bee Diapers visit www.BuzzieBee.com or call 542-0505.
7.30.2007
7.23.2007
long distance diaper service
this is a gathering of my college friends to welcome the newest of the next generation. little matthew here is wearing buzzie bee diapers, on loan, and his parents wash for him every few days. go bates! go cloth!
7.19.2007
3 Simple Steps to Shrink Your Family’s Footprint
Tiny footprints are great. Our family scrapbook contains the tiny footprints of our two daughters. Liefe’s are the smallest with tiny newborn footprints done just hours after her birth. Haydee’s are a tad bigger as they were done a few hours once she came home to Maine at nine-months old. These images reinforce how both how much they’ve grown and how small they still are. Their tiny footprints remind me of my parental responsibilities to raise them well and to tread as lightly as I can on their earth so they can fulfill their obligation to leave the world a more beautiful place.
There are many tools to help us tread lightly on the earth. One is a calculator to compute individual and household carbon footprints - the annual carbon emissions created by daily living. Climate change is caused by excessive greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere. An online search produces several such calculators. The Nature Conservancy’s carbon calculator gives clear definitions for often misused terms such as global warming and climate change. It depicts one’s carbon footprint relative to others, helping to put a household’s consumption into perspective. For example, for a household of four, the American average is 110 tons of CO2 annually, the world average is 22, and our family comes in with 44. By mainstream American standards, we’re doing well. Since climate change impacts the entire planet, we could and should be doing more.
Here are some ideas which, if you’re not already doing, will easily reduce your family’s carbon footprint. These can all be done with children. By modeling responsible consumption, we help our children shape the footprint of tomorrow. If you have other ideas, please do share them with me and others.
(1) Use cloth napkins on a regular basis. Cloth serves as a better barrier than paper so you’ll probably only need one per person for each meal. Laundered in cold water, along with the other laundry and hung to dry whenever possible, cloth napkins are better for the environment than their paper counterparts. Napkins can be purchased locally or, if you sew, will sew up quickly and can be made of any washable fabric.
(2) Make every effort to limit the amount of time your car sits idling. In other words, when you’re not using your car, turn it off. For most vehicles, you waste more gas idling for one minute than you do by turning off and restarting your car. So, if you’re going to run in to pick up your children from school, please turn off your car. Or, if you’re the the first car to get stuck in construction traffic and you know you’re going to be sitting there several minutes, turn off your car. An idling car gets zero miles per gallon. The larger the vehicle, the more gas is wasted when idling.
(3) Buy from area farmers and at farmers markets. Supermarket food travels an average of 1,300 miles from farm to table. In addition to helping the environment, you’ll get better tasting foods if you buy things grown or raised close to home. Local food is fresher because its journey is shorter than food shipped from away. Purchasing locally, or growing your own, will cost less and will keep more money in the community’s economy. The Rockland Farmers market is at the Public Landing on Thursdays, 9 a.m. -1 p.m. The Camden Farmers market is on Colcord Avenue, Wednesdays 4:30 p.m. -6:00 p.m. and Saturdays 9 a.m. -noon. Local food is also available at many farm stands as well as at The Good Tern Food Co-op, 750 Main Street in Rockland.
7.02.2007
Why Go Cloth?
Parents are obligated to make millions of decisions. Some small - like which brand of mac&cheese to serve and how often - and some very large decisions - such as choosing a child care provider or school. Most parenting decisions impact more than our children on a particular day. Some decisions are made long before we ever hold our babies for the first time. Take, for example, the diaper decision. The way I see it there are three options, none being mutually exclusive: diaper-free, cloth or plastic.
The diaper decision is generally after considering the options and determining the easiest method. Cloth diapers are by far the easiest. They are easy on on our babies, our hearts, our wallets, and our planet.
Easy on our babies. Gone are the days of diapers pins and dunking diapers in the toilet. Cloth diapers have evolved to be as quick and convenient. With velcro or snaps, they are easy to put on... or at least as easy to put on as their plastic counterpart. Washing diapers at home takes the same amount of effort as doing your normal laundry. As cotton contains no chemicals and breathes better than plastic, rashes due to diapering with cloth are virtually nonexistent. Studies show that babies in reusable cloth diapers tend to potty train 6 to 12 months earlier and easier than babies in single-use, throwaway plastic ones. Age-appropriate potty training helps in establishing positive self-esteem and gives toddlers a huge sense of accomplishment and independence.
Easy on our hearts. Changing a newborn in cloth feels very good. Knowing the advantages of cloth instills a sense of pride. Knowing that cloth is gentler on baby and the planet, each diaper change becomes a positive experience for parents and baby. Later on, using cloth offsets some of the challenges of raising of a toddler. In three seconds flat, a toddler can destroy just about anything - from an heirloom quilt to all the information saved on her mother’s laptop. One day a toddler may love a certain food and for some unknown reason, after you’ve stocked up on it, she’ll refuse to eat it. Add diaper after diaper to the mix and the workload more than doubles. A toddler in cloth understands her bodily functions, connecting the feeling of a full bladder with the sensations of elimination, and will naturally begin to potty train.
Easy on our wallets. Using a simple diapering system of prefolds, covers, and washing at home, parents can diaper a baby from birth to potty training for under $400. Most likely the same diapers and covers could be used for a second child, cutting the cost per child in half to $200. Using a diaper service requires even less effort and costs $2350 for two years. Using plastic diapers for three years probably costs about $2300 (assumming $65/month, not including sales tax, disposal fees or the additional impulse buys when running to the store to get diapers). The Real Diaper Association calculates that Americans spend $7 billion annually on disposable diapers (cash register price only, disposal and production expenses are additional). They also estimate that by switching to cloth, Americans would save over $6 billion annually - enough to feed every American child who goes to bed hungry.
Easy on our planet. The diaper-free option, known as elimination communication or EC, has the least impact on our environment. EC will probably surface as its own column topic at a later point but for now, you can learn more about it at www.diaperfreebaby.org. Cloth keeps waste - both plastic and human - out of landfills (and roadsides, lakes, ponds, and any other place where you’re likely to come across a throwaway diaper). The energy and raw materials consumed to produce cloth diapers is minimal, and even less when the product’s reusability is factored in. No one knows how long it takes for plastic diapers to decompose. It’s estimated at 250-500 years. It’s common knowledge that old cloth diapers make the best cleaning rags. Seems to me that cloth diapering is a recycling fundamental- using something again and again until it simply returns to the earth from which it came.
The diaper decision is generally after considering the options and determining the easiest method. Cloth diapers are by far the easiest. They are easy on on our babies, our hearts, our wallets, and our planet.
Easy on our babies. Gone are the days of diapers pins and dunking diapers in the toilet. Cloth diapers have evolved to be as quick and convenient. With velcro or snaps, they are easy to put on... or at least as easy to put on as their plastic counterpart. Washing diapers at home takes the same amount of effort as doing your normal laundry. As cotton contains no chemicals and breathes better than plastic, rashes due to diapering with cloth are virtually nonexistent. Studies show that babies in reusable cloth diapers tend to potty train 6 to 12 months earlier and easier than babies in single-use, throwaway plastic ones. Age-appropriate potty training helps in establishing positive self-esteem and gives toddlers a huge sense of accomplishment and independence.
Easy on our hearts. Changing a newborn in cloth feels very good. Knowing the advantages of cloth instills a sense of pride. Knowing that cloth is gentler on baby and the planet, each diaper change becomes a positive experience for parents and baby. Later on, using cloth offsets some of the challenges of raising of a toddler. In three seconds flat, a toddler can destroy just about anything - from an heirloom quilt to all the information saved on her mother’s laptop. One day a toddler may love a certain food and for some unknown reason, after you’ve stocked up on it, she’ll refuse to eat it. Add diaper after diaper to the mix and the workload more than doubles. A toddler in cloth understands her bodily functions, connecting the feeling of a full bladder with the sensations of elimination, and will naturally begin to potty train.
Easy on our wallets. Using a simple diapering system of prefolds, covers, and washing at home, parents can diaper a baby from birth to potty training for under $400. Most likely the same diapers and covers could be used for a second child, cutting the cost per child in half to $200. Using a diaper service requires even less effort and costs $2350 for two years. Using plastic diapers for three years probably costs about $2300 (assumming $65/month, not including sales tax, disposal fees or the additional impulse buys when running to the store to get diapers). The Real Diaper Association calculates that Americans spend $7 billion annually on disposable diapers (cash register price only, disposal and production expenses are additional). They also estimate that by switching to cloth, Americans would save over $6 billion annually - enough to feed every American child who goes to bed hungry.
Easy on our planet. The diaper-free option, known as elimination communication or EC, has the least impact on our environment. EC will probably surface as its own column topic at a later point but for now, you can learn more about it at www.diaperfreebaby.org. Cloth keeps waste - both plastic and human - out of landfills (and roadsides, lakes, ponds, and any other place where you’re likely to come across a throwaway diaper). The energy and raw materials consumed to produce cloth diapers is minimal, and even less when the product’s reusability is factored in. No one knows how long it takes for plastic diapers to decompose. It’s estimated at 250-500 years. It’s common knowledge that old cloth diapers make the best cleaning rags. Seems to me that cloth diapering is a recycling fundamental- using something again and again until it simply returns to the earth from which it came.
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