This bird house does not make me feel guilty for anything I've ever built… but it does make me more conscious of things that I do in the future. I hope the impact is the same for you.
Nice point. I never thought about it like that before. As an aside, my husband and I debated about paper plates the other night. He thought it was better to use real dishes but then the dishwasher fills up faster and we use more water and electricity. I thought it was better to use and reuse the paper plates and put them in the recycle bin after. I just don't know who is right. But I think we are all starting to look at things differently now.
That is a question many people have debated. I would side with sending dishes through the dishwasher because you are not adding to a landfill of cutting down trees to make the plates. However, electricity production and cleaning the dishwasher waste water also impacts the environment… so instead of an apple versus a rock type of argument, it might be an apple versus an orange (like you said).
Kids are normally the most environmentally friendly because they eat with their fingers.
Here's a web page for you to read: http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=28827 . It goes through your question, comparing carbon emissions and water use for both paper and ceramic plates. The short answer is that if you use your ceramic plates at least 150 times (about 6 months) then those are the most environmentally friendly, even if you run them through the dishwasher each time. But the article is pretty good at examing lots of "hidden" costs of each choice – good food for thought.