So, why did the disposable diaper companies choose this avenue to battle it out? Personally, I think they are trying to tap into the growing number of cloth diaper users. The “Cute” factor is by far the part of cloth diapering that is the most fun. Who doesn’t love looking at a well rounded cloth diaper stash full of vibrant colors and adorable prints?

However, I think the disposable diaper companies miss the point. How our cloth diapers look is just the drop in the bucket. Most cloth diaper users are more concerned with what is actually touching our babies skin, chemical free soft fabric vs. paper and chemicals. The fact that cloth diapers are cute, just adds a little bit of whimsy an otherwise mundane chore. In essence, having a colorful disposable diaper is like enjoying your favorite tea in a pretty paper cup rather than a gorgeous heirloom teacup. Now, which would you prefer?

Why is it that cloth diapers automatically become worse for the environment than disposable diapers just because you wash them. Does that mean because we use cloth towels, cloth sheets, and cloth clothing that need washed on a regular basis that we should all switch to paper counterparts. Maybe we should stop washing dishes also and use paper plates and plastic forks. This just seems ludicrous to me.

What these disposable diaper companies fail to mention is the amount of water and other raw materials that manufacturing, packaging, and shipping disposable diapers actually take. In fact, to process the wood pulp from trees into paper, guess what the process takes? That’s right…water. I am not talking about just a little bit of water either, but massive amounts. Do you ever hear anyone mention that? What about the number of trees that are needed to produce the approximately 1.3 million tons of wood pulp needed each year for the manufacture of these disposable diapers, do you ever hear any mention of this? In fact it is estimated to take at least a quarter of a million trees to produce enough disposable diapers to diaper the babies in the US for just ONE year.  I don’t know about you, but I think that that is a LOT of trees.

What about the oil that is needed to produce disposable diapers… Do you ever hear about this? It takes 1 cup of crude oil to produce the plastic needed to make one disposable diaper. With over 18 billion disposable diapers used each year in the US, this is a massive amount of oil. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even include the oil needed to package and ship said disposable diapers.

The sad fact is that producing these disposable diapers is quite a misuse of our natural resources, but you don’t hear about that do you? It is a shame that the madness doesn’t stop there. Unfortunately, though, these same disposable diapers are used once and then thrown into our already overburdened landfills where it can take 250-500+ years to decompose.

It seems to me that there is still no question…

Cloth Diapers are BETTER for the environment and MORE GREEN!!!

The average baby wears diapers for approximately 3 years. At an overall average of 8 diapers per day, most babies use an astounding amount of about 8700 diapers during their diapering days. Based on the cost of three popular national brands, the cost per disposable diaper is around $0.26. If you factor in the cost of disposable diaper wipes, about $0.04 per wipe, than you are looking at $0.30 for each diaper change. It doesn’t seem like much, but compiled over 3 years and the total cost adds up to approximately $2600. I don’t know about you, but I think that is a significant amount of money especially when it is for essentially TRASH. Unfortunately, this amount doesn’t even include such costs as diaper rash cream, extra trash collection fees, gasoline, etc.

On the other hand, cloth diapers seem so expensive when you start pricing them. How can you possible save money using such costly diapers? Well for a minimum of about $400, you can cloth diaper your baby for the entire 3 years. This is using the most inexpensive cloth diapering option of prefolds, diaper covers, and a few pocket diapers for nighttime. However, if you choose a more expensive option, such as pocket diapers or all in one diapers, you could potentially spend around $1200. Factor in the cost of laundering your cloth diapers which is about $400 for 3 years, including detergent, and you are looking at a total cost of about $800-$1500. This is a total savings of about $1000-$1800 over the cost of disposable diapers.

The numbers don’t lie, you really can save money by switching to cloth diapers. Use those same diapers for a second child and you save even more money. Isn’t it a nice feeling to be in control of how much money you are actually spending on your baby’s diapering rather than throwing away your hard earned cash on trash? The choice is yours.

The controversy first started about 20 years ago, when some studies concluded that disposable diapers were  just as environmentally friendly as cloth diapers. Wouldn’t you know it? These same studies were funded by none other than Proctor and Gamble, the company that makes a popular disposable diaper and had the most to loose if the finding were in favor of cloth diapers.

Needless to say, these studies showed that environmental impact of disposable diapers were no worse than that of cloth diapers. Lets think about this for a moment. They claim that disposable diapers filling up our landfills at a rate of about 80 billion diapers a year is no worse than the amount of water and “chemicals” needed to launder cloth diapers. However, the fact is that disposable diapers make up approximately 2%-4% of all waste in the landfills and they are the third largest group of waste products following only paper and food and drink containers. Not to mention that it takes anywhere from 250-500 years for each diaper to biodegrade which depends largely on the amount of air and sunlight to which they are exposed. So each disposable diaper that is thrown in our landfills today has the potential of still being there in the year 2500.

In addition to filling up the landfills, disposable diapers contain another hazard…human waste. Even though every package of disposable diapers states that one should dispose of waste in the toilet prior to throwing away, most people disregard this because it significantly reduces the convenience factor. Imagine, if you will, actually swishing a disposable diaper in the toilet with all the super absorbent polymers inside. When all was said and done, you would have  a very saturated, very heavy diaper…more so than it already was. So even though it violates the World Health Organization’s guidelines, most of the human waste goes into our landfills along with the disposable diaper; where it is estimated that at least 100 intestinal viruses are alive and well. These viruses have the potential of being washed back into our groundwater supply, as well as, being carried right back to us via insects. Environmentally friendly??? I think not!!!

Compare all of these things to the approximately 50 – 70  gallons of water that it takes to launder cloth diapers once every three days. This  is about as much water as it would take to flush the toilet 5 times a day. Factor in that now more and more washers are water efficient (requiring on average 20-40 gallons of water per load), than that number is more than likely obsolete. While we are on the subject, one must also consider than many people who use cloth diapers launder them in environmentally friendly detergent, which has very little impact on the environment. Also the use of chlorine bleach is not recommended for today’s modern cloth diapers, so it is rarely used today.

Another aspect that one needs to consider when evaluating the environmental impact of diapers is the manufacturing process. In 1991, in an independent study by Carl Lehrburger, “Diapers: Environmental Impacts and Lifecycle Analysis “, it was found that manufacturing disposable diapers generates 3 times more waste than cloth diapers. In another study, the Landbank Consultancy, an environmental agency in the UK, concluded, after reviewing the data from environmental studies on diapers, that disposable diapers use 2 times more water and  3 times more energy than their cotton counterparts. They also stated that disposables use 20 times more raw materials and produce 60 times more waste. Not to mention that the emissions from the manufacturing processes of the paper and plastic for the disposable diapers is much more noxious than those of the cotton industry.

I guess what it comes down to is what is your definition of “green”? Is it reduce…reuse….recycle? If so, no one can argue that cloth wins hand down.  The impact that a little bit of water (a renewable resource) and a bit of detergent (especially if it is all natural) in no way compares to impact that disposable diapers have on our environment. The idea that a single use products, like disposable diapers, are just as good for the environment than those that are used over and over again, like cloth diapers, to me is just plain common sense.