Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

I thought I’d provide a disclaimer right up front for my male followers as I’m going to be talking about periods also know as the monthly visitor Aunt Flo–or AF in boardspeak!

Last night was garbage night in our city.  We’re part of a pilot project  for the inner-city to have trash out after 6pm up until 9pm.  I’m guessing so people don’t have to see this eyesore! My neighbourhood mainly consists of multi-dwelling buildings with the occaisional single family home mixed in.  It’s a very diverse neighbourhood, that also has it’s challenges- parking, snow removal, and recycling & garbage removal are some of them. About 5-6 years ago our city adopted an every other week trash removal and compost on the off week.  It was soon noticed that the Southend could not handle this, as many had no way to compost or a place for the compost bins or a place to store the trash for 2 weeks.  It was decided that trash removal would remain weekly with compost every other week.  Since then the city has now changed to a weekly compost pick-up with trash every other week, with the exception of the Southend we have trash and compost weekly.

The problem I have with this is that people are abusing this!  In front of one single family dwelling I counted 12 large black trash bags…TWELVE!  It’s obvious that no one in that household is recycling or composting anything!   We are a family the same size as that one and we throw out 1 (ONE)trash bag a week!  So it got me thinking about some of the things I have done personally to cut back on unnecessary waste.

One thing I have started doing is using reusable feminine products.  If you would have asked me 4 years ago, I would have laughed in your face. Actually I remember sitting down with some of my friends and us joking about it, “Why on earth, would anyone want to?”.  You see that’s just it, it’s about the earth!  Until we can start thinking about all of these little things that we can personally cut back on, our landfills and oceans will continue to fill.

So you’re probably thinking, “Well, what the heck is she doing for Aunt Flo?”  Having 3 boys in 6 years along with breastfeeding into toddlerhood kept AF from making her monthly visit for a long time.  So when she returned I decided to look into alternatives. I’ve never been a fan of maxi-pads and even whilst typing the word I’m getting a little redfaced and giggly, so cloth mama-pads were out of the question (although many moms love them).  I decided to look into menstrual cups and found many CPO members raving about the Diva-Cup! You can read about this Canadian mother-daughter team at their website www.divacup.ca

image compliments of Squawkfox-Where Frugal Living is Sexy

Read more about the DivaCup here

Or discuss it with other CPO’ers here

I will never go back to disposable feminine products ever again!  I just wish I had found this sooner!  So there you have it just one way you can make a small impact and save money and embarrassment as a bonus!

Happy Earth Day!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 1:50 pm and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.