One of the latest journeys we have taken is to reduce as much trash and waste in our house as possible. My husband has enacted a plan to recycle, and or reduce as much food related waste as possible. I on the other hand decided to make a change with our new addition a beautiful baby girl. Instead of the traditional disposable diapers we used for both of our other children I opted for cloth diapers and here's why. It is estimated that every year 27.4 billion diapers are consumed in the United States alone and 92% of them make into the landfills the other 8% are disposed of in other ways like dumped under a minivan in the grocery store parking lot.
The real issue is that no one really knows how long they take to decompose but it is estimated that it could take anywhere from 200 to 500 years which is a really long time considering how many diapers are used each year. If this wasn't bad enough disposable diapers contain terrible ingredients like wood pulp, chlorine, dioxin, trubutyl-tin and sodium polyacrylate. I am not certain which of these chemicals was responsible for the constant and horrible diaper rash my two older daughters got but I can say for certain the new baby has had very little while using cloth diapers and the few times we used a disposable or two she instantly got diaper rash.
There are other great perks to cloth diapering apart from the mounting environmental considerations. Cloth diapers seem to leak less, they are just as easy to put on as disposables, much more fashionable, and best of all incredibly economic. My husband and I went back and forth about the cloth diapering situation, we went over the numbers of biodegradable diapers, regular diapers, and much more. Funny enough we were actually applying a key tool used in environmental policy analysis by weighing the cost versus the benefits.
This type of key analysis showed that the cost of the disposable diapers was not worth the benefits given, cloth diapers on the hand were well worth the benefits for the small cost. On average a good cloth diaper can cost anywhere from 10 dollars all the way up to 20. That seems like a lot but when you weigh in this diaper will be used from infancy all the way up until potty training that is not a large number considering what you would pay for disposables. I will leave some links for anyone who is interested in the wonderful world of cloth diapers. I will most likely do another post about my diaper journey which will include diapers I prefer and why, my wash routine, detergent and much more.
Here are some great links for cloth diaper information:
http://www.diaperdirt.com/
http://www.theclothdiaperwhisperer.com/
http://www.kellyscloset.com/
To comment on our own cloth diaper experience, it has been easier, cleaner, more fun, and helpful than I would have expected. I was very nervous to start cloth diapers because it seemed to be a bit overwhelming at first. I was about 6 months pregnant when we really started getting serious about it. When we started to buy diapers it was hard due to the vast amount of diapers out there, all of the places to buy them, and where was the cheapest. We had so many questions about our diaper routine than we could answer. Would we use cloth wipes or disposable, would we cloth diaper on the road, which diapers would be best for us, and much more. The biggest question once we started making a list of things we needed was, is this really going to be economic for us? When considering the environmental impact it did seem beneficial but what about the money? To tell you the honest truth it is a bit of a shock to get started but after that it is smooth sailing. There are way's to cut back on the initial cost. I will post some cloth diaper tips for those who are trying to get started. For the most part cloth diapers have been awesome for us and I am regretting not knowing this information for our two oldest children.
ReplyDeleteI have friends that cloth diapered both of their children and they always raved about how easy and better it is/was. Not to mention all of the super cute diaper cover options!
ReplyDeleteIt really is fun, easy and addicting. I have found there are a few big differences, one there are less leaks with cloth diapers, you get less diaper rash due to changing more often, and they cover more so it holds better and longer than disposables. I didn't actually think that I would like them so much, but they have far exceeded my expectations.
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