When my son, Max, was three months old, a friend encouraged my to look into cloth diapers. This recommendation seemed so unreasonable to me at the time; my husband, Aaron, had been (and still is) working in Missouri and we own two small businesses. Needless to say, time is precious in our house, and the convenience of disposables seemed like the only way to go.
However, dealing with farmers and persons in the agricultural industry has made me more acutely aware of our environmental impact, so with a few words of encouragement and about a half an hour on the web researching, my interest was peaked. Everyone, husband and mom included, thought that I was suffering from some sort of hormone induced psychosis, however, I was determined to try cloth diapering for a month and see if we could do it! Below is some information that I found regarding the pros and cons of cloth diapering….hope you enjoy our journey!
DISPOSABLES DIAPERS: No discussion of diapers would be complete without mention of the poopy-fator! The first thing that most people think when they think cloth is "eeeewwwww, you want me to do what with that". A few months, who am I kidding, just a few weeks into motherhood and anyone who has been there will tell you, the prospect of handling bodily fluids of ANY kind is not is disgusting as it had once seemed. Being peed on, pooped on, spit up on, and and drooled on changes your perspective on things to say the least. Husbands and other caregivers, however, are not so eager to handle littles poopy diapers! This was an extremely tough sell for the husband, and definitely influenced the diapers that we decided to use, but on with that later. Another thing to consider is how often you can feasibly wash the diapers, another bone of contention with Aaron. The last thing that anyone needs is to have diapers laying around their house for any length of time. Also, forget about just throwing some diapers and wipes in diaper bag and running out the door. We aren't just talking about vacations mind you, we are talking every time you plan on leaving the house. Oh, and don't forget about the extra laundry, not just just the diapers either, but the clothes that you have to wash if those cloth diapers leak on you. Disposables can hold way more mess and in my experience are less likely to leak; they have a tighter more trim fit, and there is a major learning curve when it comes to using cloth. At first blush, disposable diapers seemed to have the upper hand, at least when it came down to convenience.
That being said, disposable diapers were definitely going to cost significantly more if used from birth to potty training. I estimated that we would change over 5,400 diapers in just two years! At birth, we were using Pampers Swaddlers, so based on that math, we were looking at an approximate cost of $1,700 in those two years, and those are conservative estimates; this estimate doesn't take into consideration things like Max's explosive teething butt! And worst of all, all of those diapers, plus disposable swim diapers, and training pants end up in landfills every year. The Clean Air Council actually estimates that "each year, parents and babysitters dispose of about 18 billion of these items. In the United States alone these single-use items consume nearly 100,000 tons of plastic and 800,000 tons of tree pulp […] and, to top it off, these diapers will still be in the landfill 300 years from now." Those figures translate to an estimated 49 million diapers per day.1 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW…ok, so thats a lot of plastic and chemicals floating around out there, not to mention untreated waste! Sorry, the figures don't lie. Cloth diapers are way more cost effective and are way, WAY more environmentally friendly!
CLOTH DIAPERS: Most of the online resources I found suggest having enough cloth diapers to last for two days, that way you are only washing diapers every other day or less. This was important to us, so that we weren't alway washing, but also so that the diapers that we were investing in would hold up. I mean, you wouldn't wash and wear that expensive lacy bra everyday and expect that it will last 2 plus years, just sayin! So, based on those same 8 diaper changes a day, that means that we were looking at no less than 16 diapers to start out with. I opted to have 20 diapers on hand, so that there was some wiggle room with those numbers; we purchased 6 diaper shells and 20 inserts as well as two pocket diaper for nighttime. These diapers meant an initial investment of $275…way more economical than their disposable counter parts. Don't get me wrong, I do expect to purchase some more along the way if this transition is successful, but we are still ahead of the game.
Now for the nasty truth, and I appologize in advance for the technical nature of this paragraph. This is the info that the diaper companies don't what you to know about…the info that I didn't know about until I started looking. Cloth diapers are better on babies skin and are a healthier choice. According to Greenpeace, disposable diapers contain traces of Dioxin, a by-product of bleaching the papers in disposables. It is listed by EPA as the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals and it is banned in many countries, but not in the US.2 Greenpeace also mentions that disposable diapers, including Pampers, which, we had been putting on Max's bum, contain Tributyl-tin (TBT) - a toxic pollutant known to cause hormonal problems in humans and animals as well as sodium polyacrylate, a type of super absorbent polymer that turns to a gel when it gets wet in doing so, it increases the risk of toxic shock syndrome by increasing absorbency and improving the environment for the growth of toxin-producing bacteria.3,4 Aside from those reasons, this gel means that baby's bum is in contact with moisture for extended periods of time which would increase the likelihood of rash. I am a chemist, so don't get me wrong, I am not anti-chemical. I do believe, however, that there are times in life when natural is a better alternative. I also FIRMLY believe in correctly disposing of these chemicals; were a big corporation to dispose of such large quantities of chemicals or if there were a leak that lead to the introduction of that much human waste into the environment, the public would be FURIOUS. Logically, I just can't justify at least trying cloth since cloth diapers don't contain these chemicals…you don't have to worry about them coming into contact with baby's skin, but you also don't have to worry about them ending up in the environment.
Knowing all of this, I am not sure why everyone wouldn't at least consider using cloth. There is no judgement in that statement, I fully realize that every family has to do what works for them, but the statistics are staggering. I encourage everyone to give it at least a try. We have just finished the first 6 weeks of cloth diapering and my family thinks its just as easy as disposables are and I love knowing that we aren't adding to the landfills. Even the naysayers have gotten on the bandwagon; its pretty amazing how far cloth has come!
My next article will be about the diapers that we chose and what we have found works and doesn't. The good, the bad, and the ugly!
1. Clean Air Council. Waste Facts and Figures. 17 July 2010. http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html
2. Allsopp, Michelle. Achieving Zero Dioxin: An emergency strategy for dioxin elimination. September 1994. Greenpeace. http://archive.greenpeace.org/toxics/reports/azd/azd.html
3. Greenpeace. New Tests Confirm TBT Poison in Procter & Gamble's Pampers: Greenpeace Demands World-Wide Ban of Organotins in All Products.15 May 2000. http://archive.greenpeace.org/pressreleases/toxics/2000may152.html
4. Armstrong, Liz and Adrienne Scott Whitewash: Exposing the Health and Environmental Dangers of Women's Sanitary Products and Disposable Diapers, What You Can Do About It. 1993. HarperCollins.
No comments:
Post a Comment