One of my passions these days is Cloth Diapering and all things related. I love the way cloth looks on my little boy, and I love the prospect of itty bitty cloth diaper on my womb-baby. I like my routine of washing cloth diapers, I love buying a new diaper here or there in a fun print that makes my day. I love getting "fluffy mail," these diapers that I've ordered online and are handmade and hand sent to our family. I even love changing these diapers, from one soft, fluffy bum wrap to another. It's great.
I also am familiar with that "do good" feeling that cloth diaperers feel. The impact of disposable diapers on the environment is truly frightening, since they wind up clogging our landfills for years. Each family that chooses to use cloth diapers reduces their solid waste by one ton each year. Worse, disposable diaper users often throw feces into the garbage instead of flushing it down the toilet, where it belongs. Consider this. Parents I know remove the disposable, poopy diaper from the baby's bottom, toss the soiled wipes into the diaper, wrap it up onto iteslf, and then, then, tie it up in a plastic bag. This then goes into a garbage pail with our other trash, and is put curbside for pickup or taken to the dump. Ew. Do I even need to elucidate how wrong that is? If disposable diaper users would even just toss poo into the toilet prior to disposing of the diaper, we would be eliminating that unsanitary practice of leaving feces in with household garbage.
If you're considering the environmental impact of cloth diapers, you're in good company. The argument I hear from eco-savvy parents who still refuse to go cloth is that the washing of the diapers is worse for the environment than the tossing of disposables. I find that equation so misleading. We know that disposable EVERYTHING is worse than reusable anything. Cloth napkins, dishtowels, and dishes have already replaced paper equivalents and nobody is complaining about the impact of washing these. You wash your clothes, you wash pots and pans; if you're concerned about the environment you get creative about using less water when you do it. You install low-flow showerheads, HE appliances, and you turn off the water when you brush.
Increasing confusion are the disposable diaper companies that are putting big money behind making sure that nobody thinks disposables are bad. Read this article by Peggy O'Mara about the fight to get the truth out in spite of Proctor & Gamble and other companies trying to cloud the issue. Also for your consideration, the use of toxic chemicals like dioxin in disposable diapers, right up against baby's skin. The use of bleach in manufacturing these diapers is just one more environmentally UNfriendly way sposies present themselves to parents and babies.
I could go on and on about the benefits, but this has all been written before. Be careful where you get your information, though. Our print media is quite tied-up with parent company advertising, so it's hard to get the real deal. Please keep an open mind and look for yourself. You might just find yourself as interested as I am with what goes on your baby's bum.
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