Jenny and I are trying reasonably hard to reduce our impact on the planet, we hardly use the car, buy fair trade clothes and baby stuffs and other things.

We made a decision early on in oscar’s pregnancy that we wanted to try and make everything to do with him either ethically produced and low impact on the environment. So we got lot’s of second hand things, and bought organic fair trade reusable nappies and, biodegradable wipes and disposable nappies.

We only use the disposable nappies at night and the other night I was putting a bag of nappies in the bin and realized that we are contributing to landfill and waste big time. Just using disposable nappies at night is heaps of nappies. Imagine how much waste people who only use disposable create. Plus it’s not just nappies it’s the plastic bag you put them in and the wipes as well.

Most people in the world don’t use disposable nappies, most people can’t afford them. They are a rich persons attemtp at not dealiong with the unclean and trying to make things faster. Most of our parents didn’t use disposable and they coped. So you have to clean off a bit of poo and put cloth ones in the washing machine it’s not actually a big deal.

I think using disposable nappies is irresponsible, some under paid worker in china makes a plastic nappy for you to use once then you throw into a garbage tip where it takes hundreds of years to decompose. I think if we are to respect and care for the land God has given us then we should take serious steps towards reducing our impact, and nappies is a major area we can make a start.

In the UK 4% of their garbage is disposable nappies, 8 million nappies a day go to landfill.

In Australia we use over 800 million disposable nappies a year which takes up 145,000 cubic metres of landfill space.Weighing 111,000 tonnes.

Imagine if a country like India or china used disposable nappies on all their babies. If 20 million people in Australia can create 111,000 tonnes of nappy waste a year.

Please if you use disposable think about using reusable, try and put aside the convenient factor and think, will it be convenient for generations to come?

And yes jenny and I use disposable nappies at night, so we are not perfect but we are working towards using none.

If you want to explore some options here are some links.

Baby Beehinds

Eco Babe

I should blog more.

On the way to Ikea today we drove past this truck.

It made me laugh and luckily we had jenny’s new camera in the car. My mum took a photo too.

Almost every day I have the same thing for lunch and every day it tastes amazing.

A cheese, cucumber and a tomato roll. White roll with lots of margarine.

With a cold can of coke to wash it down

I think I am slowly working out what it is that I do and how i do it. Last year as most of you would know I began working for TEAR as a youth person. I spent the year dividing my time between TEAR and that other place that doesn’t like being mentioned on the internet because they have insecurity problems. Anyway it was a strange year splitting my time between two Christian organisations, both doing very different things.

In terms of TEAR the position was a bit strange, A lot of free reign and a very different working environment to what I was used to. I somehow started creating a high school resource kit that comes out once a term I didn’t plan on making it and TEAR didn’t plan on it being made. But it is. I also spent most of last year feeling very dumb and uneducated in terms of knowing about social justice issues and speaking about them. There are all these amazing people in TEAR who have been doing it for years and are really good communicators. Then there is me they guy who makes jokes and politically incorrect comments.

I would go along to events with other TEAR staff and just enjoy listening to them speak passionately about issues and always be nervous when it was my turn to do stuff.

This year I feel much more comfortable, I feel like I know what I’m doing. I can create things and go to meetings and be myself. I can take on more things and not take on others. I think changing to doing this full time was a very good decision. After 6 years of doing the other thing in a strange environment it is nice to be free, it’s nice to have the freedom to do whatever I want really and know that not only the people want me to do that but so does the organisation. There are no manuals or strict ways of doing things, there is not the feeling of being trapped.

Bloody ripper I say.

Today I only just made it to the station in time for my train, but i did make it. I got on the train and a nice express to the city. The carriage was quite full but i found a seat next to a lady with 5 thousand laptop bags. She kindly moved one of the bags that was on the seat to the floor. I sat down, then she moved the bag closer to me and lent it on my leg.

I didnt mind. I got out my mac daddy and began my morning email check.

The lady pulled out a leather bag the size of a phone booth from under her seat. she put it on her lap and pulled out some make-up. She began applying some brown undercoat (foundation). Lathering it all over the place. then out of the brown phone booth bag came some more brushes, containers, and about 75 mirrors. At one stage in the journey i saw here holding 3 mirrors at once along with a brush and a some form of spack filler.

Anyway the whole way to Central she was applying different coats of product. Using a different brush and mirror for each stroke. She finished off with some shiny stuff (I assume it was estapol to protect herself from the rain).

When we arrived at central I got ready to get off and removed the laptop bag from my leg and stood up. Eventually the lady stood up too.

I don’t really get make-up. I dont think it makes women look more beautiful. People always comment on how brides look the most beautiful they will ever look on their wedding day. Now I know Jenny looked amazing on our wedding day. But, I think she looks much prettier without the wedding make-up, just natural. Same with all lades they all look nicer without the dulux weather shield.

Anyway when the lady on the train stood up and turned towards me, I almost fainted. I had been sitting next to the Joker from the Dark Knight.

Today Tom, wife and I went to Top Gear live.

There was a lot of hype and it had potential to be amazing, but in the end it was just a bunch of advertisment for car companies and navman. Jeremy Clarkson and Richard hammond where funny, but scripted and they didnt really do much, mostly just introducing different cars with stunt drivers in them The Aussie guy (Steve Pizzati) was terrible, he was very scripted but not very good and giving the impression he was making up on the spot what he was saying.

There was some good parts to the show, the soccor was cool, and some of the stunt driving was pretty amazing, there was funny one lines from Hammond and Jeremy. But the hole that James May left was quite a big one and the stig only appeared right at the end for a very weak finale featuring a 3D helicopter on a big screen pretending to shoot at the stig in a car.

It was a big money making extravoganza with product placement throughout. I’ll stick to the tv version.

hypothetically if you where given $950 to spend on anything you wanted, it was the only money you have and you must spend it within 2 weeks of receiving it what would you spend it on?

Grandpa Steve sent this link to Tom and I.

It’s an amazing photo of Obama and the crowd, it is soooo hi res. Zoom in and let it load.

so cool

also Munich airport just for fun