Sunday 3 November 2013

A post about poo

People who don't have children often wrinkle up their noses, literally and figuratively, and the idea of pooey nappies. I don't mind poo however, unlike vomit which makes me feel, aptly enough, sick. After all, you're worried if your baby doesn't poo for a while, or struggles to do so, whereas vomit is a sign that something is wrong.

Nevertheless, shit stinks. I don't mind wiping it off the beautiful bums of my beautiful babies, but, in the words of Bill Clinton, I don't inhale.

Our council introduced fortnightly bin collections earlier this year for non recyclable rubbish. This has given us a poo problem. On an average day my children will do two poos each. That's four pooey nappies. Even bagged pre binning, that's quite a stench. Imagine now, by the time the rubbish truck is due, the smell of fifty six poos in various stages of decomposition. It's pretty awful in this chilly weather. Imagine what it was like in the summer. We live in a terraced house with small front gardens. Neither we, nor people walking past, can avoid our bins. It's a wonder our neighbours are still talking to us.

You might suggest that the solution is to use cloth nappies, though the environmental case for this, if you use a washing machine and tumble dryer, is far from clear cut. (This is explained in detail here but essentially the carbon footprint of cloth nappies is only lower than that of disposables if you wash at lower temperatures than recommended and don't tumble dry, and reuse the nappies for subsequent children.

I'm not against encouraging recycling, and I understand the strain on finances for local government, but really, fortnightly collections - it's a policy that stinks.

Here's a little plug for my Kickstarter crowdfunding project for a book about elections aimed at toddler. Here's the link - every pound or dollar helps, and I have until Nov 21 to get to the £2000 total. And here's my previous blog post explaining what I'm doing

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