Baby steps to less garbage

A few days ago a co-worker showed me a picture of the baby stroller that he and his wife plan to buy for their baby on the way. I nearly choked on my office coffee when he told me that the stroller would cost more than $500. It's been a long time since my wife and I had a baby stroller, but even factoring for inflation, I'm sure that it didn't cost anywhere near $500.

I'm also sure that my friend didn't for one second consider buying a used baby stroller, essentially recycling a stroller and thus diverting the plastic and metal from a local land fill.

A quick search on Ebay found more than 1,500 baby strollers for sale. A similar search on Craigslist notched just 14 in the DC/MD/VA area.

There were a lot more babies than that being pushed around the last couple of years,  and from the looks of things, most of the mom and dad powered taxis are going to wind up curbside and then in a landfill.

That's such a waste of resources, both financial and environmental.  I'm as much of a germ-a-phobe as the next person (I use those wipes at the supermarket each time I get a new shopping cart), but no one could convince me that it's a good idea to for us to buy item after item for our children when a good ol' 'previously owned' think would do just fine.

Most financial writers suggest that buying a new car -- something that you'll make use of for years -- is a waste of money. I've not read any of them chime in on the reasonableness of buying a new baby stroller, but I think that given a little thought, these writers would come to the same conclusion I did: if the wheels roll, the seat's soft, the baby won't care if someone else used it.

But the parents will care, and I guess that's the point, and why my coworker is willing to drop the cost of little less than a week in a Disney World Resort for a baby stroller.

And perhaps it's unreasonable to think that those of us who can afford to purchase a brand new designer stroller for our child should not for the sake of the environment.

 But where do we start? And when?

Producing more and more goods burns more and more fossil fuels, creates more and more waste and sooner or later we're going to have to make changes. My co-worker's stroller isn't a big deal in the scheme of things, but when the number grows to tens of thousands heading for Virginia's landfills, then we're talking a big deal.