Footloose and Diaper-Free

  • Diaper-free parents say that their baby shows them signs when a bathroom break is needed. They call the dialogue "elimination communication." (Photo by Jessi Ziegler)

When most Americans have a baby,
the parents decide whether to use
disposable or cloth diapers. But
Julie Grant reports that there’s
another trend: no diapers at all:

Transcript

When most Americans have a baby,
the parents decide whether to use
disposable or cloth diapers. But
Julie Grant reports that there’s
another trend: no diapers at all:

Having kids without diapers might seem kind of far out. So,
who better to tell us about this then Willow Lune, of
Berkeley, California.

She remembers when her son was 3-months old. They
were at her mother-in-law’s house. Her husband took the
baby to the bathroom – and accidentally left the door open.

“And his mother came in and saw him holding our son over
the toilet. And she said, ‘what are you doing?’ And my
husband said, ‘well, he’s going to the bathroom, just like you
do.’ And it took her about a minute, and she said, ‘that’s so
cool.’”

Lune and her husband said it was normal to see babies
without diapers when they were traveling in Tibet and
Thailand. So, when their son was born, they decided to try
it. He’s was going to the toilet on his own by age 1 and a
half.

Now Lune teaches classes in Berkeley and other areas
around San Francisco.

She says diaper-free little ones can wear crotch-less pants –
or might not wear anything from the waist down.

And it’s up to the parents to pay close attention – or risk
having to reach for the cleaning supplies.

“There might be a little wiggle, or sometimes just the staring
at you. There’s just little subtle clues that they actually give
you from the time they’re born. So it’s our job to look at that,
listen for that, pick up on that. And then respond to it.”

Turns out, there’s a name for this little dialogue between
babies and parents. They call it elimination communication,
or E.C. Instead of using diapers – and then training them to
go in the toilet a few years later – Lune says parents can just
pay attention. They can show babies from the start what to
do when the need arises.

Lune says one of the reasons she and her husband do this
is because they are concerned for the environment.

Pampers and Huggies clog up the landfills. The other major
option – washing cloth diapers – takes more attention from
parents. But doing that can use a lot of water and electricity.

Jennifer Williams lives in the San Francisco area. She has
three children – all under age four.

Williams is also concerned for the environment. And she
wants to pay close attention when her 6-month old daughter
goes to the bathroom. She even uses cloth diapers.

“Even just with cloth diapers, you have to be way more in
tune to what’s going on with someone’s body. Where –
she’s in disposable right now – I’ll just forget about it for five
hours. You don’t have that option with cloth. Unless you
want to give her a horrible a rash. So, the whole EC thing is
really interesting, because you really have to be in touch with
what’s going on physiologically.”

But Williams works full time. Elimination communication just
is not practical for her family.

“Yeah, I mean, because you really do have to be available to
whenever the baby has to go to the bathroom. With one
baby, when I was home on maternity leave, I probably could
have done it. Once you have more than one running
around, it just doesn’t fit. Maybe I’m lazy. So be it.”

Supporters of the diaper-free lifestyle say it’s actually easier
then potty training kids when they’re older. And they say
parents don’t have to do it all the time. They can try it when
they do have time to pay close attention.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Peace Out, Plastic Bags

  • Whole foods Store Manager Sherry Wiseman, says her Cleveland store hasn’t had plastic bags since February and her customers have hardly noticed. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

It’s one of the eternal questions, ‘paper or
plastic?’ They’re both recyclable, but only paper
bags come from a renewable resource. And since only
1% of all the plastic bags on earth are actually
recycled, Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports some cities and
even one national company are wondering why we need
plastic bags at all:

Transcript

It’s one of the eternal questions, ‘paper or
plastic?’ They’re both recyclable, but only paper
bags come from a renewable resource. And since only
1% of all the plastic bags on earth are actually
recycled, Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports some cities and
even one national company are wondering why we need
plastic bags at all:

(garbage truck sounds)

Americans send around 100 billion plastic bags to landfills every
year, where they’re supposed to be compacted by bulldozers.

(sound of plastic bag in the wind)

That is, unless they catch the wind and transform into mini
parachutes.

Carmine Camillo is a spokesman for the national company Waste Management.

“The tree lines and fence lines can be littered with bags, until we get
a chance to get out there and clean them up.”

This happens so much around the world, it’s picked up the nickname ‘tree condoms’. Besides that,
they clog storm drains, and
eventually end up in waterways and oceans, where fish
mistake them for jellyfish.

The solution, it would seem, is to recycle them.

But shopper Mary Jo Wickliffe says that’s too much of a hassle.

“You unload your groceries and you go home and throw them away. That’s what I do with them.”

Since Wickliffe shops at the organic market Whole Foods she
says she’s been doing less of that. Because the
chain recently bagged the plastic.

Cleveland Store Manager Chery Wiseman says to stop offering plastic bags is a decision that goes against busines school 101.

“It costs us more money to buy our paper recyclable bags, but we
feel that’s worth it to keep the plastics out.”

Whole Foods’ paper bags are made from 100% recycled content and
shopper Bruce Kane says it’s about time plastic went out of
style.

“I notice that China has fines for stores that use plastics. I think it’s a
positive trend and I’m glad to see it coming to Whole Foods and coming to the
United States.”

The trendsetter in this country is San Francisco. It’s the only city to successfully ban plastic bags.

New York City, Annapolis, Maryland, New Haven,
Connecticut, Santa Monica, and Portland, are looking to shun plastic too. But the bruising the city of Oakland took might make them think twice.

A plastics industry group, called the Coalition to Support Plastic
Bag Recycling sued Oakland over its ban and won. It
claimed the city didn’t do its homework on alternatives such as compost-
able plastic bags or a recycling program.

Sharon Kanise is a spokeswoman for the plastics industry at the
American Chemistry Council.

“We certainly hope that the city of Oakland will work with the state of
California on recycling, because it
doesn’t belong in the roadways, it belongs in the recycling bin.”

Plastic bags are made from petroleum and natural gas, but
Kanise says their manufacture and transport uses 70% less
energy and produces half the carbon dioxide that making paper
bags does.

But for some, choosing between paper and plastic isn’t enough. A few people are starting to shop with reusable cloth bags. Some
stores sell them for about a dollar and Wal-Mart recently gave
away 1 million free to its customers.

But the concept of bringing
their own bags to the store is still foreign to some Wal-Mart
shoppers.

Customer 1: “It really doesn’t matter to me, but I’m going to need a
bigger bag than this.”

Customer 2: “It’s easier just to throw these out and come back to
the store with nothing in our hands.“

Customer 3: “Well, it’s just becoming popular, so I’ll start to.”

Whether it’s paper, plastic, or cloth, each can be environmentally-friendly, if
consumers go to the extra effort. But if people keep throwing them away, local governments might attempt to
reduce plastic bag use. A move the plastics industry will certainly
contest.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

New Life for Old Running Shoes

Runners often wonder what to do with their shoes once the treads have worn too low to give enough foot support. People who have donated old shoes to charities or thrown them away have a new option now… a “sneaker recycling program.” As part of an ongoing series called “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Skye Rohde reports:

Transcript

Runners often wonder what to do with their shoes once the treads have worn too low to
give enough foot support. People who have donated old shoes to charities or thrown
them away have a new option now… a “sneaker recycling program.” As part of an
ongoing series called, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Skye Rohde reports:


David Lupinski wants old running shoes, no matter how smelly they are. They just need
to be clean.


Lupinski is the recycling director at the Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management
authority in Utica, in upstate New York. He’s collecting used athletic shoes as part of the
Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program.


Now, this got my attention. I’ve been running for 11 years. I’m a one-pair-a-year girl.
I’ve sent way too many worn-out shoes to the Salvation Army… just because I didn’t
know what else to do with them. I wanted to find out what this is all about.


Nike picks up the shoes from participants like Lupinski and sends them to a facility in
Oregon where they’re ground up. David Lupinski explains it best.


“The upper area, that’s material that is more cloth and things like that. And that’s what
they make into padding for carpeting. The middle sole has a little bit more plastic, a little
bit more rubber in it. They grind that up and they make it into a material that they use for
things like tennis courts, basketball courts. The bottom of the sneaker or athletic shoe is
pretty much all rubber. They grind that up and they actually make a product that they call
“Nike grind.” And that material is what they use for tracks. It’s nice and soft and
pliable.”


The shoe program is a good fit for Utica. That’s because of the city’s ties to running. The
National Distance Running Hall of Fame is located here, and the country’s biggest 15-
kilometer road race – the Boilermaker – is held here every July.


But Utica is not alone. There are 33 organizations from 20 states participating in Reuse-
A-Shoe. Each of them is expected to collect at least 5,000 pairs of shoes this year.


This all started in 1993, when a couple of Nike employees asked if there was anything
they could do with defective shoes instead of throwing them out.


Nike joined up with the National Recycling Coalition in 2002 to expand the program to
all 50 states. Kate Krebs is Executive Director of the coalition.


“I liked it for a number of reasons. It was a company that was taking back their product
at its end of life and turning it into something that was really productive and really cool.”


Krebs has helped almost 60 organizations try to team up with Nike, and there’s already a
waiting list to participate. She says the participants are creative about collecting shoes
too.


“We just had a girl scout troop in Los Angeles on Earth Day collect more than 5,000
pairs of shoes in one day. Some zoos have set it up. Some marathons have set up
collection. Junior high/high school track programs are collecting. So everyone’s doing it
a little different… and that’s the part that’s so magic about it.”


Back in Utica, Dorothy Cornell is dropping off a few pairs of shoes at the National
Distance Running Hall of Fame.


“I just put in three sneakers that I found in my basement that are no good to me or my
family. And they’re doing a recycling here, so we’re bringing them down here. It’s, you
know, a great idea. I wish more people would, you know, be aware of it.”


(ambient sound)


A little later, the Solid Waste Management Authority’s David Lupinski peers inside the
donation box at the Hall of Fame.


(rustling sound… “Geez, this is a bag of athletic shoes…”)


He finds six pairs of shoes, including two fluorescent orange track shoes that are almost
brand new. He says he picks up about 40 pairs of shoes a week from this box. There are
seven other donation boxes around the area.


Lupinski has almost 800 pairs of shoes now, but he still has a long way to go before he
gets his 5,000 pairs and Nike sends a truck to pick them up. People have called him from
across upstate New York to see how they can get their old shoes to him.


Reuse-A-Shoe participants are all hoping for lots of shoes. But they also want to spread
the word and get people as excited as they are about giving old shoes new life.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Skye Rohde.

Related Links