An article this week on pollution caused by the global shipping industry left me thinking, yet again, about buying local.

The group behind the report, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), also said the shipping industry emits more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide than many industrialized nations.

Serious sustainability considers carbon emissions at every step along the way. This includes shipping, particularly long-distance shipping. Those looking to green their lives should consider taking the carbon out of the equation when they buy cloth diapers. Whether you are considering a 100-mile diaper stash or any other way to buy local cloth diapers, buying local is a great way to build community.

Am I asking you not to buy diapers from Firefly Diapers? Of course I’m not! I would love to sell you a great organic cotton cloth diaper, and I have sent Firefly Diapers around the world.

I also know that there are local cloth diaper manufacturers in every country where I send diapers. I am suggesting that if you consider carbon emissions as part of your overall footprint on the earth, you may want to choose to buy cloth diapers manufactured near you. Get to know your local cloth diapermaker. This is just one connection in your local web.

In the Diaper Underground, I have watched several cloth diaper generations* reinvent the same diapers several times. It is fascinating to see mothers meet similar situations with similar solutions. I don’t see a problem with us all finding personal solutions to the fact of babies’ elimination, but I would suggest that we don’t necessarily need to reinvent the solutions. Women (and, yes, I mean women) have been creatively addressing this need for a long time before the internet made the Diaper Underground possible. We may not be able to reach easily into the deep past, but we have several generations of knowledge just waiting for us to ask. Even if your mother diapered you in the passing era of throwaway diapers, your grandmother should know cloth diapers. Ask her.

Asking your grandmother, interviewing her, and collecting a cloth diaper oral history from her is the point of Real Diaper Association’s project Your Grandmother Should Know. This year-long project is the RDA’s annual educational campaign to fulfill the mission of the organization. This year, we “connect current cloth diapering parents to the long history of cloth diapering.” We will support members in collecting interviews during this year, then collect those interviews in various formats the following year. What we do depends on what we get, but we have an active DJ looking for audio and a Real Diaper Circle creating an instructional video already.

We don’t have to convince ourselves that it is necessary to reinvent cloth diapers. The knowledge was never lost. You can learn about cloth diapers the same way your grandmother and her grandmother did, face-to-face from the women with experience.

Would you like to participate in the project by interviewing your grandmother, your mother, or any other person who remembers using cloth diapers? Join us. You don’t need to be an RDA member to participate (though we would love to have you join). To start, read about the project and make a plan. I have created Project Guidelines available as a book ($10.95) or as a free download for you to print yourself.

* A diaper generation is about 2 years — the time it takes one child to grow out of diapers.

Your Grandmother Should Know:
An Oral History of Cloth Diapers from RDA

If you are trying to do your best for the environment, here is another way to tie yourself up in knots. You may have heard of the Buy Local movement. You may see “Buy Local” stickers and signs at some of your favorite independent bookstores and food coops. How far can you take the idea of buying local?

Local food. The local food movement encourages us to buy from local farmers. This has had enough of an impact on the global food industry that market research studies are now available on the impact of the Buy Local movement on the industry. When we act on our desire to support local agriculture through our diets, we have an impact on economy, health, and community. Less fossil fuel is required to bring our food from field to table. Local foods often have less packaging. We eat food sooner after it is harvested. We support the local economy, especially small farmers.

100-Mile Diet. We can make eating local more specific. When two concerned Canadians launched their 1-year experiment with a 100-Mile Diet last year, they got a lot of attention. Others joined in, started their own 100-mile diets, and reprinted the original blog entry like crazy.

Dress local. We can also take the idea even further. Dress local, too. In their “Hunt for an Ethical Wardrobe & The Soul of Cloth,” two other Canadians set out to buy only “locally designed and manufactured” clothing. A blog entry from The Tyee, the same site that hosted the 100-mile diet declaration, tells the story of their 100-mile wardrobe. The Organic Consumers Association has reprinted the original blog entry as well as an Utne Reader article about dressing local.

How can you bring this idea home? Buy local, of course. If you are fortunate, you may find that local businesses have already formed a business network. The day I write this, organizations local to me are featured at Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE): spotlight Salt Lake City and the organizations Vest Pocket Business Coalition and Local First Utah. Look! There are some of my favorite stores, and many of them are SLC e2 businesses (environmentally and economically sustainable, just like I’m an SLC e2 citizen trying to become carbon neutral). BALLE is a network of over 5,000 local businesses in 30 networks. Find a local business network near you.

Your Local Economy. What has this to do with you besides encouraging you to consider the vitality of your own local economy? Well, that is the point. In the Diaper Underground, a lot of people buy diapers that travel a long way before they reach the baby, and materials already travelled a long way before the diapers were manufactured. You can slow the burn of fossil fuel and participate in your local economy if you buy locally manufactured cloth diapers.

1. Use your zip code to check the 100-mile diet map.

2. Check cloth diaper directories and parenting groups to find local cloth diaper manufacturers or retailers within your 100-mile radius. Try a location search at Diaper Pin.

3. Buy local diapers.

4. Tell me if it works.

I don’t know if there are enough small cloth diaper manufacturers that this can work, but I would like to know how it goes.

Add Life and Connection to Economy. What is the benefit? Real life is face to face. Deep knowledge is face to face. I have always been happy to deliver local packages personally because I want to meet the families who use Firefly Diapers. I did this when we lived in Buffalo, New York, and I do this now in Utah. When I moved back home to Utah last fall, my very first paying customer from many years ago was among the first to welcome my family and invite us for dinner. Last week, I spent a lovely afternoon at a local park with one of my earliest customers, and I have plans to spend an afternoon next week with one of my most enthusiastic current customers. Two of these women, as a matter of fact, have been long-time collectors of Firefly Quick Dry Color Diapers (and you can see their colorful Firefly Diapers stashes here). Buying local creates more than an economic network. It adds life and connection to the local beyond the experience of consumption.

When I founded Real Diaper Association, I built the philosophy of local communications into the structure of the organization through Real Diaper Circles. People have passed knowledge of cloth diapers face to face through generations. This is the idea behind our new oral history project, Your Grandmother Should Know (more on this later). You can reclaim that local knowledge and your local economy through simple steps.

Support your local diapermaker. Buy local diapers, and create a 100-mile diaper stash.

Do diapers make you laugh? I admit I have occasionally found a diaper funny, but this is usually the happy-amusement sort of laughter. It really hadn’t occurred to me that some might find diapers so odd that they use laughter to relieve their discomfort.

My daughter learned the hard way that diapers make children laugh–an extension, I imagine, of the general popularity of bathroom humor. (If I say “butt” to my 5-year old, he’ll laugh no matter what the context.) My daughter told me recently about a conversation between herself (then 7 years old) and two boys (about 8 years old) in the playroom at our grocery store. This happened a while ago. She waited before telling me about it.

“What does your dad do?” asked the boy.
“He dyes fabric so my mother can make diapers.”

They laughed at her. Actually, they were probably laughing at the word “diaper,” but she felt it was at her. She hadn’t expected this response, but she’s heard it a couple of times now. Though some kids thought it was interesting, that isn’t what an 8-year old focuses on. She has learned to mention my other so-called careers instead. Her new canned responses:

“What does your dad do?”
“He’s a scientist.”

“What does your mother do?”
“She teaches at the university.”

I told her I’ve learned my own version of this. We talked about learning how and when to people want to hear particular versions of our lives. “I sell cloth diapers” requires a bit of time and context to fit into most people’s version of reality.

Lest you think this phenomenon isolated among children, a representative from an environmental news service called me last week. Adults titter at the mention of diapers, too.

“Had you heard of our service?”
“Yes. I receive daily email updates.”
“Is it possible you might use our service to publicize a press release?”
“Yes, that is possible.”
“May I ask what your business is?”
“I manufacture and retail cloth diapers.”

She laughed!

“Is that funny?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Really. I would think that someone like yourself would understand the importance of cloth diapers as an environmental issue.”

I’ve heard similar responses, but not from someone whose job is to publicize environmental issues. When people ask what I do, I just raise an eyebrow and say, “I sell cloth diapers.” I actually enjoy seeing the responses. Some people just let that be a minor point in a conversation and some people take it as a criticism of themselves. The laughter was a new one, though.

With only 3-5% of the baby population in cloth diapers, how do we make diapering choices a serious issue? Some of us already talk about cloth diapers and issues of cost, health, and environment. We aren’t on a soap box all of the time, though. Can cloth diapers just be normal, mundane, and part of a conversation without being particularly funny?

Have you encountered this? What do you do?