parenting
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Jason and Kimberley Graham-Nye, eco-diaper entrepreneurs, answer questions
The Graham-Nye clan. What are your job titles? Cofounders, CEO and president, dad and mum of gDiapers. What does your company do? Manufacture and market the world’s only flushable diaper. Every day in the U.S., 50 million waste-filled diapers go into the landfill where they sit for up to 500 years. Diapers are the third-largest […]
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On his book, Last Child in the Woods
This is the second part of my interview with Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. The first part is here.
Louv is not just interested in healthier kids and families, though that's obviously his abiding passion. He also realizes in a way few other environmental leaders seem to that connecting kids with nature is vital for the future of the environmental movement and, well, the environment. As he says below, kids learn about environmental problems earlier and earlier these days, slowly coming to associate the environment with doom and hopelessness.
But this next generation has perhaps the greatest challenge ever faced by humanity: to remake society in a sustainable way. They need hope, and they need that sense of wonder and visceral connection that comes only from getting out into nature.
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An interview with Richard Louv about the need to get kids out into nature
Richard Louv is an anecdote machine. As we milled about near the door of a Seattle cafe awaiting lunch-hour seating, he kept up a constant stream of witty, telling stories — about “no running” signs on playgrounds, clueless environmental leaders, suffering outdoor-gear execs. I started fumbling for my recorder. Richard Louv. It’s no wonder Louv’s […]
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Umbra on baby nurseries
Dear Umbra, I am pregnant and wondering if you know of any websites or resources for setting up a nursery — for green furniture, bedding, and mattresses. We’re painting the nursery with low-VOC paint and looking for low-VOC carpeting, and we gratefully accept used toys and clothes from friends and family. Janine OlsenPine Brook, N.J. […]
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When it comes to having kids, this global citizen can’t bear it
This old earth has spun ’round the sun 40 times since my founding egg and sperm got cozy with each other, and yet I’m still a solo act: no wife, no family, no tribe. While a life partner and tribe can be left to happen whenever they happen — if they happen — I’m at […]
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Toxic babies
You know, nothing warms the cockles of a father-to-be's heart like a study showing that babies in the womb are awash in toxic chemicals.
We are abusing our children, all of us, before they are even born. Lovely.
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A new study on diapers finds no difference between cloth and paper
Ok, that's a dumb headline. But the problem itself -- whether to diaper my babies with cloth or disposables -- was one I spent a bit of time agonizing over.
But perhaps I shouldn't have. A new study commissioned by the British Environment Agency (reported on here and here) suggests there's almost no difference between the two, at least in terms of environmental impacts. Which is roughly the same answer that this 1992 study, at the website of our friends at the Institute for Lifecycle Energy Analysis, came to.
The British study made some suggestions for ways that both disposables and cloth diapers could be improved, to reduce their impacts: for people who wash theyir own diapers, that means reducing washing temperature, using efficient washers, and line drying for home-washed cloth diapers. (Which, of course, is good advice for all your washing, not just diapers.)
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Are greens overlooking a key constituency?
On a snowy winter morning five years ago, after four days of cocooning in the hospital, I walked home carrying my newborn daughter. I knew I was crossing the threshold into life as a mother, caregiver, and working parent. What I didn’t know was that I was about to become a different kind of environmentalist. […]