I am admittedly addicted to all sorts of reality TV. It started in the ‘90s with MTV’s The Real World and has extended to game shows of all sorts (looking at you, Amazing Race), celeb-reality shows (Tori & Dean Inn Love, anyone?) and more recently those shows on Discovery Health that chronicle the lives of XXL families (specifically Kids by the Dozen and 17 Kids and Counting).
The show 17 Kids and Counting follows the Duggar family, with nineteen+ members (two parents, 17 kids, and a baby on the way). Watching the show initially made me wonder in a big way about the environmental impact this ginormous family is having. The family estimates that they’ve used over 90,000 (NINETY THOUSAND!) diapers to date. They do 200 loads of laundry a month. At first glance it appears that this fam would have a carbon footprint the size of a football field.
But after I’d watched the show for a while, I wondered if I wasn’t rushing to judgment. The family are dedicated shoppers at thrift stores like Goodwill, and buy all of their clothes used. They make their own laundry soap, and a little goes a looong way. All of the kids are homeschooled, which means they aren’t expending tons of gas on getting to school by bus each day.
What do you think… can super-sized families be sustainable? If you’re part of a large family, what steps (if any) has your family taken towards going green?
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