Cloth Diaper Trial Packages are a great way to get you feet wet.

If this is you and I know YOU are out there… have you ever considered a Cloth Diaper Trial Package? Many cloth diapering boutique have such a creature.

Cloth Diaper Trial Packages are great idea! You get a package of a variety of cloth diapers, a sampling of all the different kinds of cloth diapers, and cloth diapering accessories.  Then for a small fee, you can wash and use they cloth diapers and accessories for a specified time. If you love them all great… keep them, if not send them back. You aren’t out much money and if nothing else you can tell all of your friends that you “tried” cloth diapering

Cloth Diaper Trial Packages are the best of all worlds… especially if you are on the fence. You have probably read that 27 billion disposable diapers go into our landfills every year and that those same disposable diapers that we throw away today will be there in the year 2500. You have probably also read that disposable diapers have chemicals and toxins in them that are not very safe on your baby’s delicate skin. You have most likely also read that even though it seems like a lot of money initially, disposable diapers still cost a lot more than cloth diapers.

Even after all of these facts, you may still be wondering… I don’t know if I would like using cloth diapers. What if I just do not like them? What if I spend a lot of money on cloth diapers and it just isn’t my cup of tea? All these are valid. Even though cloth diapering is very easy, I too was apprehensive before I began using them. Like all new things sometimes it is difficult to just go for it, especially when the “it” costs quite a bit of your hard earned dollars. This is why Cloth Diaper Trial Packages were created…. just for you. They are inexpensive and allow you to get you feet wet with cloth diapers, so you can decide for yourself if cloth diapering is for you.

If you are on the fence, try a cloth diaper trial package. There are many out there in cloth diapering cyberspace…look around.

If you do decide to try one, I bet you will see that cloth diapers truley are as easy to care for as everyone says they are….

….and you may just fall in love with all the squishy goodness.

I know I have!!!

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!!!

However, before I started cloth diapering, I was a bit nervous. There were so many  diaper choices and I worried that it would be difficult, but I decided to try them anyway. Guess what? I never looked back. After about a week or so, I had a routine down and I found cloth diapering to be just as easy to use as disposables. I was already doing laundry everyday anyway, so another load or two a week was nothing to write home about.

Anyway to make a long story short, I love that my baby has cotton and soft fabrics against her sensitive skin. I know that with cloth diapers she is not being needlessly exposed to potentially harmful chemicals. Also, I can not imagine wearing paper underwear day in and day out, so it makes me happy that my baby wears cotton diapers rather than paper ones.

Besides, I love how cute my baby looks in cloth diapers. There are so many colors and patterns available that I never tire of seeing the same old white diaper. The chore of diapering has become fun. I love being able to choose which cloth diaper or diapering combo that I am going to use on my baby’s dupa at any given time. Also, I rarely, if ever, have “blow-outs” with my cloth diapers. They are so great at containing even the messiest of messy messes, which I can, definitely, not say about disposable diapers.

I love that I am no longer contributing to the massive amounts of disposable diapers that are ending up in our landfills every day along with all the encapsulated human waste just waiting to wreck havoc on our groundwater supply.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, I love that I never needed to make a “midnight run” to the store to buy diapers. I am saving money, helping the environment, protecting the health of my baby, and loving every minute of it.

So, why do you cloth diaper??? I would love to hear your stories

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.