I hate to admit that we are not using cloth, but I try really hard to do lots of other things to try to make me feel less guilt over this. We only use ecostore cleaning products and washing powder (or Next Generation). I recycle anything that I can, and I re-use anything that I can too (like plastic bottles, wrapping paper, use cards to make tags, organise clothes swaps with family members, donate anything that we dont want to charity). We use cloths instead of wipes. DH drives a very small car, and can go about 3-4 weeks on one tank of gas. I know I should be doing a lot more, and maybe once Oli is a bit bigger then I might try to go with cloth. I really want to give it a go - but DH is really poo-phobic and I just cant see him partaking in the nappy changes!

cold water, no scrubbing cloth user here too.  I must admit that I get frustrated when he has runnier poos that are sticky but they still roll off under the tap in the laundry.  I have thought of getting a little tap and hose for the toilet.  Its no harder to get poos off a cloth than a sposie.

It has become a habit, at the end of every day I throw his nappies through the wash and hang out the next morning.  If it is going to rain, I sacrifice the heated towel rail (not eco I know) and dry them all on there.  I hate using our drier.  I would just hang them on the clothes rack but I have a little "helper" that pulls them all off and cuddles them...yuk!!!

Dana when we come back to Palmy you can see Josh's cloths and see how so much like sposies they are if you like???

We use cloth naps on both kids, reusable shopping bags so no plastic, some ecostore and other similar products. We have also wrapped our hot water cylinder to keep power costs down.

Interesting topic...being a hippy myself I always thought cloth would be the way to go lol  I'm pretty sure we'll still use cloth however there is also a strong arguement for *how* one uses cloth to make it more eco friendly than disposables. If you use hot water washes and tumble dry then apparently the amount of energy used is no better than having disposables sitting in a dump!  Obviously if you cold wash and line dry you're doing a much better thing for the environment. there is also the issue of what material is used for cloth nappies as cotton is one of the most intensively sprayed materials used....so organic is better or bamboo or hemp etc. (My sources for that little piece of info was the excellent 'G' magazine...Australian but still has very local articles. They did a thorough test comparing energy, cost and waste etc between cloth and disposables in an issue earlier this year and cloth was only marginally better. V interesting).

As for your original question Tracy on what we are doing to be more eco friendly (and I think you and I had this chat over lunch...and disagreed lol)...I'm doing what is arguably the *best* thing for the environment...and that is living as a vegetarian...and raising my children the same way.  Even the hardest of critics can't argue much with that one lol. I also rarely use a car so my footprint is lighter than most...although no doubt at all I could do better still  .....