They have arrived!

Hello,

My name is "bwings" and I'm switching to cloth diapers....or at least my daughter is!

There is a lot of stink around the world about these diapers, pardon the obvious pun. Parenting is such a touchy subject and I don't pretend to be doing it the one and only way. I am going to do it the best way I can and leave you to yours. Removing parenting from the equation let's talk dollars and ecosystems then.

First thing I simply must share with you. It is apparently illegal to dispose of human feces, I couldn't find anything to support this but I have heard it and it does make sense. So why then, you might ask, are you allowed to dump tonnes of it in the landfills in little trojan horses of diapers? Quite simply put...you're not supposed. Do you use disposable diapers? Yes? Go fetch the bag or box it came from. Now turn it over and find on it where it gives you the instructions of using their diapers. Right there, in plain print that you never read because "Pft, I know how to use a diaper" it says, "Shake diaper contents into toilet before discarding"

WHOOPS!

Cloth diapers, what did our ancestors use?

First nations mothers would use milkweed and other plant life to wrap around their babies before strapping them to a papoose board.

Papoose Board

Inuit would use soft moss they had collected in summer months to line their babies clothes. Europeans in the 16th century used squares of cloth folded and tied around the waist with strings. The icky bit would be that rich children had a clean diaper a day anyone else changed once every 3-4 days (EWWW) Pioneers didn't have the best conditions either, they couldn't always clean their diapers and would just dry them for use the next day.

Cloth diapers have definitely come a long way since then.




Disposable Diapers, how long have we been tossing them out?

Disposable diapers largely get their finding from WWII. With women being thrown into the work-force they didn't have time to run around cleaning baby poo of clothes anymore. As they say supply and demand runs the economy and sure enough it wasn't long before they were established.

Marion Donovan & Boater

• 1942, during WWII a swedish paper company (Pauliström ) created the first disposable diaper using sheets of tissue inside rubber pants.  
• 1946 Marion Donovan developed a waterproof diaper shecalled the "Boater" using a sheet of plastic from a shower curtain and using plastic snaps in lieu of safety pins. 
• 1947 George M. Schroder invented the first disposable with fabric that was not woven. 
• 1949 Johnson & Johnson would introduce disposables to the United States. Others quickly joined the market as competitors. 
• 1956 Procter & Gamble {think Pampers}got a sniff of the subject [oh man I keep punning with you]
• 1959 Pampers had a name



Pampers 1961



Pampers vs Huggies

• 1961 pampers was introduced to the market almost twenty years after the first disposable diaper. 
• 1966 Sodium Polyacrylate (Super-absorbant material) is developed but not introduced.
• 1968 Kimberly-Clark {think Huggies} began beta testing
• 1978 Huggies is introduced to the market thus forcing pampers into a long and vicious battle for top diaper ever since. 
• 1984 Super-absorbent material sodium Polyacrylate is introduced. 

Cloth vs. Disposable the Big Debate!

Before I get into the logistics of Economics and Environmental factors let me spout off some fun facts.

The average time a baby is in diapers is 30 months. In that time they average 7,300 changes.
In 1955 it is said that 99.999999% of babies wore cloth diapers and 7% experienced diaper rash.
In 1991 statistics say that only 10% wore cloth and 78% of babies experienced diaper rash. OUCH!

Economics

Economically speaking it all depends on a lot of things. Diapers can cost up to $100 a month depending whether you are a name brand addict or a coupon cutter. It would also, of course, depend on your own level of hygiene but I'm not even going to think about that. *Shivers* Depending on how old your child is when you are using cloth diapers the same could be true for them. If you're using a laundry service for them it will balance out to be the same. And to wash them in the machine will cost a fair penny too. Not really encouraging as far as the money speaks. Although if you consider the rate at which you'd go through low grade disposable that might be cheaper then you might actually be saving money by going cloth anyway.
I couldn't do the math in my head but this lovely lady did and broke it down quite beautifully I might add. Her findings also lean towards cloth diapers being more economical. Although not by much if you are using a laundry service as opposed to washing them yourselves.

Environmental

Although there is a huge smelly mess of discussion about the impact of each on the environment, again with the unforgivable puns, to me it's pretty obvious that the cloth diapers are less impacting. The pro-disposable diaper argument is that the grey water caused by washing the cloth diapers is just as bad as the manufacturing and disposable of disposable. I haven't yet posted on laundry but I will say this, grey water impact can certainly be lessened depending on your detergents and water temperature.

An estimated 5 million tons of untreated waste and 2 billion tons of urine, feces, pastic and paper are added to landfills every year. It would take 80,000 pounds of plastic and 200,000 trees to manufacture disposable diapers for the United States alone!  "Bio-degradeable" diapers would have to be exposed to air and sun and in a landfill this is not very likely and thus would take hundreds of years to decompose only partially.

Untreated disposable diapers sitting in landfills risk contaminating ground water while the contents of cloth diapers get flushed down a toilet and then washed into grey water which will go into sewer systems to be treated at wastewater plants.


Conclusion


I'm not here to tell you how to raise your child, I am never here telling you which way is right or wrong in life. I am here only to draw conclusions on environmental impacts and express what I am personally going to do about it. Thus the blog about a mom going green. {there, I think I avoided angry mom mobs}

It is evident that cloth diapers are easily more environmental, but that was never a question for me. Assuming you are using environmentally friendly detergents and cold water {see tomorrow's post} you are not damaging the environment as much as you would be.

What am I doing about it? Well, I didn't use cloth diapers in the early part of her life because I am a working, stay at home mom. I would never have had time to get them clean as quickly as I should and therefore would have had maybe 20 odd dirty diapers just piling up, ewww. So for hygienic reasons I abused the earth as well as my wallet. My daughter wanted to potty train at 8 months (bless her) and so at 8 months I did start shaking her turds into the toilet, even before knowing I was supposed to be doing it all along. I did this in an effort to show her where they are supposed to go. Now that she has mastered the potty I have purchased 6 pre-fold cloth diapers. These are less expensive as they are not as "high-tech" as far as cloth diapers come. I will touch more on cloth diapers in another post. But for now I should go wash the potty seat for it's next visit from my cloth diaper wearing beast.

Your neighborhood hippie mom