Choose the UpCycle

What to do with all old top-loader washing machines that are no longer considered sufficiently efficient?

I've written before about upgrading to efficient washing machines but this creates a waste problem as obsolete washing machines relocate to landfill. Earlier in the year my sister bought a house that came with an old washing machine, which she replaced. Tyson has been re-using parts from that machine ever since, along with a second one he 'rescued' from the roadside on bulk rubbish.

Project one: fire drum.

This is the stainless steel drum from a top-loader washing machine removed from its casing. All those little holes keep the fire supplied with oxygen, and ensure warmth is at foot-level as well as face-level.

Tyson also rescued pieces of the electrics to use as the guts for a disc sander. That is, the spinny bits from the washing machine are now spinning a sanding disc. But it was a bit more complicated than that makes it sound - not really a straight swap.

 

He would like to add that if you are not at least a little familiar with electronics, this should not be attempted. In particular, the capacitor in an old washing machine (looks a bit like a D-cell battery) can retain enough charge to give you a nasty shock even long after the machine has been unplugged.

Some of the components of this sander, including the power switch, were amongst items salvaged from Tyson's Grampy's shed years ago, which are still being sorted through at his parents' house.

   

Smaller pieces from the washing machine were also used (along with much recycled timber) to build The Marble Run. Oh, the Marble Run... quite possibly the coolest thing in the world. Built in association with remodeling the children's bedroom without buying anything new. A photo just won't do, so here is a little video clip. See if you can spot pieces that might once have lived in a washing machine. Clue: look for metal.

 

The timber for the Marble Run was partly left over from building the loft bed (which was in turn largely made from furniture found on the verge at bulk waste time) and partly out of the skip bin for a construction site down the road.

The casing from the washing machine now stores wood for the fire drum

The power cord was reused for the sander. Tyson also salvaged a pile of screws and other bits and pieces for future use.

I believe trendy types call this 'upcycling'. But I am not trendy so to me its just using every possible piece that can be kept out of the bin. Yes, we do have a shed full of things that 'might be useful'. In fact, two weeks ago we acquired a second shed (Thank you gift-ers!)

Of course, not everything is re-usable, even with Tyson's handy-skills. The picture at the very top of this blog shows Tyson also pulling apart the old dryer that my sister removed from her house when she moved in (even new dryers are unbelievably wasteful and, in Perth, completely unnecessary, let alone really old ones). He discovered that the metal was inferior quality - flimsy sheet metal  - and most of the dryer ended up as rubbish, although a portion is in use as a shed shelf, and smaller bits and pieces were added to Tyson's stock of construction materials.

Initial Time: Pulling the first washing machine apart sufficiently to transport it home took Tyson a couple of hours. The second machine was quicker - he had learnt a few tricks by then. Building the sander took many hours snatched in bits over weeks and weeks, but (as with many of Tyson's projects) was also an activity often shared with Small Boy (and Bigger Girl, but it mostly happened when she was at school). The Marble Run keeps getting updates and alterations. The basic straight-run sections took only an hour or two, but if all the modifications were added together it has consumed a lot of hours. Ratio of fun-had-by-children to time-spent-building is still massively on the side of fun, though. So many hours of glee.

Initial Cost: zero for the fire drum; approx. $20 for a set of ten sanding discs and $25 for a velcro pad to attach them to the sander.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: sourcing firewood for the fire drum.

Impact: 

Anything we can do to reduce our waste is a good thing, as Australian households average around one tonne of household rubbish each year. When trying to explain recently to our Small Boy why we use cloth nappies and reusable nappy wipes, I slightly exaggerated by telling him every disposable nappy we threw away was being stored up to give back to him when he was a grown-up (which he pronounces 'donut'). But its only a slight exaggeration. The stuff we put in landfill will be around for our children and grandchildren to deal with into their adulthood. Would we think differently about our waste if we could see our one-tonne-per-year growing into a bigger and bigger pile, which would be ours personally to manage along with our pensions, long after we had all turned into donuts? I certainly would, and I am someone who already thinks about waste. Perhaps I have influenced my Small Boy - last time the truck came to pick up remaining bulk rubbish from the verge he wept and howled to see it all crunched away.

By re-using materials we also reduce our consumption - the opposite end of the cycle. At the consumption end the impact is around reducing the raw materials extracted from the earth to create the objects we desire, the fuel used to transport both components and completed items all over the globe, and superfluous material used in packaging all along the way. It is easy to forget both the origin and the end point for goods we consume - as if they begin life on supermarket shelves wholly created and vanish into thin air when the rubbish truck goes around the corner. 

Because of these concerns about consumption, we would never have bought ourselves a fire drum, as its not important enough to us in the scheme of things to warrant spinning the consumption wheel to acquire one (Tyson may have eventually purchased a sander, although he says probably not). A final impact, therefore, is that we are now very much enjoying items we would otherwise have foregone.

glass of wine not pictured

No More Nappy Sacks

When Eva was born I was given a pack of Nappy Sacks. They were convenient but wasteful. I told myself that when they ran out I would buy no more... but I did.

With baby number two I have decided, really, NO MORE! I took this action months ago but wanted to wait to see if I could stick to it before blogging about it. (There are several secret actions in this category...)

When out and about I use the packaging from bread to bring dirty nappies home. I also have one 'Pea Pods' nappy bag - a wet-bag that a Pea Pod brand cloth nappy came in, a gift from a friend. Apparently all Pea Pod nappies come in these, but as I only have this one of their nappies (which doesn't work as reliably as the Baby Beehinds ones we mostly use) I have only one bag, which I wash and re-use.

I am delighted to say we are now a Nappy Sack free house.

For the uninitiated (you lucky, lucky people who have no dealings with children's poo), Nappy Sack is the brand name for little light-weight orange plastic bags designed for single-use transfer of dirty nappies into a bin. They look exactly like the bags in parks for dog poo. In fact I think they could well be the same thing rebranded.

Initial Time: A few seconds each time we finish a loaf of bread to shake the crumbs from the bag, tie it in a baby-safe knot, and store it in the nappy bag.

Initial Cost: Zero 

Ongoing time or cost commitment: This is a cost saving. Nappy Sacks cost about $8 for a pack of 300. Bread bags come free (if you buy the bread inside).

Impact: I only used Nappy Sacks when we were away from home, and I think we used 3 boxes (900 plastic bags) to get Eva through nappies and start out baby number two. Maybe four. Many people who use disposable nappies use a Nappy Sack for every nappy, even at home, which would be thousands of plastic bags. By my estimates, I will avoid putting several hundred, but no more than a thousand, little plastic bags into landfill.

Wiping bottoms the green way

One of our earliest monthly actions was to choose cloth nappies.

We also started out with cloth wipes, but soon gave these up and have had three years of disposable wipes for Eva. We continue to be big fans of the Baby Beehinds bamboo nappies we started out with, and bought another set for baby #2 (Eva's ones are still good but losing some absorbency over time, and in my opinion no longer soft enough for a brand new baby bum). I decided it was time to try again with cloth wipes.
 

Three years ago we used old terry towelling cloth nappies cut into squares, and kept a day's supply wet in a tub by the nappy change table. Terry towelling was not soft enough, or effective enough when faced with challenging nappies, and the tub of water bugged me. I'm a little embarrassed that it only recently occurred to me to store dry wipers and just wet them when needed.

After a conversation with Tyson's mum about potential fabric for wipes, she generously whipped us up a batch using an old flannel sheet. They are working exceedingly well. I virtually never need more than one wipe per nappy and they wash perfectly. We have also had no outbreaks of nappy rash.

Initial Time: Cutting the sheet into strips, overlocking, then cutting and overlocking as squares, took about an hour (but not of our time - thanks Grandma!)

Initial Cost: Zero - the sheet was old and spare. Old sheets can be found in op shops if you don't have any. Twenty eight wipes used about half a double bed sheet.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: The time commitment is miniscule - only the seconds it takes to wet a cloth, and adding a few small items to each wash load. However, it is important to get your wiper BEFORE lying the baby down and taking off his nappy... I can't tell you how often this simple step trips me up.

Having reusable wipes is a cost saving. At our rate of use, we have spent over $500 on wipes for Eva.

Impact: When using disposable wipes, we used about 10 per day. Over three years, that is around 11,000 wipes. 

The most immediate impact is, obviously, not putting eleven thousand wipes into landfill (they do not flush - the packaging says so, and the way they launder if accidentally sent through with the nappies confirms that they do not break down in water).

Disposable wipes are a blend of plastic and paper, a material the Huggies website calls 'Coform'. This is very slow to break down - some estimates say wipes may take 300 years to biodegrade.

While researching for this blog post I discovered that others use more like twenty wipes per day, and some over fifty (what are they doing?!). That makes 22,000 to 55,000 wipes per baby. In 2010 (the most recent year for which figures are available), 297,900 babies were born in Australia. If all use twenty disposable wipes per day, that will be over six and a half billion (6,524,010,000) baby wipes into landfill by the end of 2013 for that cohort of babies alone*. Across Australia that would be about 105 tightly packed cubic metres of dirty wipes. 

 

However, its not just the landfill volume of disposable wipes that is detrimental. The Huggies wipes we use are made in the USA. This means the finished product has travelled at least 8647 nautical miles (for you, Hanna - 15849 km to everyone else) and probably considerably further. The individual components of the product also had to travel to reach the factory, very likely internationally, giving a considerable carbon footprint to the product.

Disposable wipes also have many additives. Listed on the Huggies box are: Water, Potassium Laureth Phosphate, Glycerin, Polysorbate 20, Tetrasodium EDTA, Methylparaben, Malic Acid, Methylisothiezolinone, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract, Tocopheryl Acetate.

What are all all these additives for? After entirely google-based research I offer you my best guesses:

Potassium Laureth Phosphate: could not find information to say what this does

Glycerin: lubricant and humectant (helps product retain water)

Polysorbate 20: wetting agent, surfactant, emulsifier (helps mix together normally insoluble liquids)

Tetrasodium EDTA: chelating agent (helps dissolve scale)

Methylparaben: antifungal agent

Malic Acid: tightens the pores in skin to make if feel soft and smooth

Methylisothiezolinone: biocide and preservative.

Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract: also known as aloe vera, it is used as a moisturiser and anti-irritant, although the lack of scientific evidence for its effectiveness suggest its prime function for Huggies is promotional

Tocopheryl Acetate: preservative, anti-oxidant, moisturiser... because it is Vitamin E to non-chemists.

In short, most of the additives seem to be about keeping baby wipes moist for as long as possible without them going feral.

Even after searching the internet I don't understand what most of the additives are, but I can tell you the majority are synthetic products that appear to be petroleum based. Even those that are naturally occurring (Malic Acid is the acid in apples; Methylparaben is found in blueberries) are not necessarily sourced naturally for commercial use. Methylparaben, for example, appears to be more commonly produced synthetically. More carbon footprint.

While of course all the ingredients have been tested for safety on baby's bottoms in the quantity they are present in nappy wipes, some are toxins in higher quantities. It is difficult to say how concerning this should be. The websites I could find that discuss toxicity all had a slightly hysterical paranoid edge to them, which makes it hard to take even their legitimate concerns seriously, if I could work out which were legitimate. Tests seem to have focussed on the safety of these chemicals at their point of use - that is, for wiping bottoms. I could not find much information about their safety as ingredients of landfill. Concerns have been raised about EDTA becoming a 'persistent organic pollutant', as it is used in so many products - in small quantities, yes, until you add them all together.

All this thinking about bottom wiping also has me asking why I am happy to use cloth wipes for my baby's bottom but not for my own. Poo is poo after all... but I balk at reusing wipes for myself. Is it the chance we might share wipes between the household? What if each family member had their own colour? Separate coloured piles beside each toilet? The main reason I won't go there is because it feels like a leap way across the eccentricity line - no longer 'pretty normal family doing a few interesting things' but into the territory of 'total weirdos who wash their toilet tissue and reuse it...'.

Toilet paper biodegrades, after all, and we use recycled paper. Its a lot of paper, though, which uses water in its production (around 31,000 L per tonne of recycled toilet paper) and has both production (~400kg per tonne) and transportation carbon footprints.

Estimates say Australians use 57 sheets of paper per person per day (20,805 per year) or 94 rolls of paper per Australian household per year. According to the ABS population clock the current populaton here is 22,792,013. Allowing for around 600,000 babies still in nappies, Australia is using about 1.3 billion sheets of loo paper every day, and around 95% of that is NOT recycled paper. On my most recent trip to the supermarket I was appalled to find that all the recycled toilet paper lines had been deleted. I spoke to a floor manager to ensure my concern at this was registered, and went to another store to stock up. I'm not prepared (yet?!) to use cloth wipes for my own toileting, but going the extra mile (well, about 500 metres) to buy and advocate for recycled toilet paper rather than settling for the non-recycled options presented is a commitment I will stick to. Even with two small children in tow who were well over shopping by then and not nearly as sweet about visiting another store as they look in this photo.

Links:
Tips from Environmental Working Group on how to navigate confusing lists of chemicals found in 'personal care products' (I love the fancy language used for the vast array of non-essential items sold as essentials in our culture)
Wipe for Wildlife campaign
Wipe It Out campaign

Info on recycled toilet paper and paper towels

Info on recycling in Australia in general
20 easy ways to be a greener parent - I am proud to say we already do ALL TWENTY at our house!! It was nice to find a list like this that made me feel proud, not guilty, for a change.

* * * * *

* Not all the babies of 2010 will use their thousands of wipes. Despite one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, some babies in Australia don't see out their first three years. One of those 2010 babies was the daughter of dear friends and died at three days old. She will always be missed. I do not take for granted the incredible privilege it is that I am able to make choices about little things like baby wipes for my two healthy children.

July 2009 - Cloth Nappies

With baby due in August, we chose to purchase cloth nappies rather than go disposable. We chose Baby Beehinds Bamboo Fitted Nappies and are happy with them. We have also set up a system of re-usable wipes – squares of old-style cloth nappy in water with a tiny bit of antibacterial soap, with the water changed every day. 

Initial cost: Around $600 for 24 nappies and 6 nappy covers. We will eventually need some bigger covers but the nappies themselves adjust to be big enough to take a child right through the nappy years. Zero cost for the wipes, as a friend gave them to us (thanks Erica).

Initial time: Zero for nappies. About 10 minutes to set up a workable system for storing wet cloth wipes.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Washing costs of water, electricity and washing powder, and the time required to do one load of washing per day. However, as nappies only half-fill the machine, our own clothes etc go in too and as a result we now do about 8 loads per week where we previously did 3 or 4 loads. Five minutes a day to replace the water and stock it with fresh nappy wipes.

Impact: We are stopping 60 to 70 disposable nappies and about 150-180 wipes per week going into landfill. (Over the course of one baby’s nappy needs, it is estimated parents spend about $2500 on disposable nappies, so we’re making quite a financial saving in the long run also)