Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship Green Sanctuary Program

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Sustainable Living "No one person has to do it all but if each one of us follow our heart and our own inclinations we will find the small things that we can do to create a sustainable future and a healthy environment." ~ John Denver Diapers Buying Guide National Geographic's Green Guide http://www.thegreenguide.com/buying-guide/diapers?source=email_gg_20090218&email=gg There is no easy answer to the "cloth or disposable?" debate. While using disposables means that lots of plastic and human waste ends up in landfills, cloth diapers use a lot of energy in washing and drying them, whether you do so at home or through a service. Which method you choose will depend on your personal preference. Some day care centers require children to be in disposable diapers, making that the preferred method for working parents. Lots of parents employ both, switching between cloth and disposables depending on work and travel schedules. Cloth Diapers: Cloth diapers, laundered at home and line-dried, are the cheapest and greenest way to go. There are greater up-front costs than your other diapering options because you have to invest in diapers and diaper covers, but these investments pay off over time, especially if you plan to have more than one baby. Look for diapers made of organic cotton, which are more expensive than conventional cotton diapers, but help reduce pesticide use. If organic cotton products are too steep for your budget, consider buying used diapers as a way to avoid contributing to pesticide-intensive cotton production. And wool diaper covers are also available, which reduce your child's direct contact with plastics. Alternative Disposable Diapers: For the environmentally concerned parent who prefers disposables, there are a few brands that use less water, responsibly harvested wood pulp and recycled or compostable plastics; those are listed in our "Product Comparisons" chart. Laundering cloth diapers at home can be cheaper if you line-dry them. Avoid diaper services, which cost more than laundering at home, use copious amounts of water and irritating detergents and consume fossil fuels to transport diapers to and from the laundering facility. If you use disposables, flush any fecal material down the toilet before throwing it away to reduce the possibility of contaminating water supplies. Change diapers often—as soon as baby is wet—to avoid diaper rash. Parents can count on changing between 5,000 and 8,000 diapers per child, and since 95 percent of families use disposables, most of those diapers are one-time use, resource-intensive packages that get sent to municipal landfills at the rate of 3.5 million tons per year. The relative amounts of resources, including water and energy, used in cloth diapers versus disposables have been debated, and some environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, say it's a wash. But there are still quite a few reasons to avoid conventional disposable diapers on the market. Environmental Issues Most disposable diapers are bleached, contributing to the global production of dioxin, a highly toxic byproduct of pulp and paper bleaching, and 250,000 trees are used every year to make disposable diapers for American babies. This virgin pulp goes straight from your baby's bottom into the landfills. On top of that, each year, millions of tons of untreated sewage goes to the landfill along with disposable diapers, an unsanitary practice that raises the potential for groundwater contamination, and fecal material, if it were to escape a landfill's fortifications through leaks or via insects and other pests, is an excellent medium for transmitting parasites, viruses and bacteria. Baby's Health Disposable diapers contain polyacrylate crystals, also called "super absorbent polymer" or "SAP," which can absorb up to eight hundred times their weight in water, turning into gel when wet and keeping baby dry and protecting her from diaper rash. But, should the diaper break open, which can happen when the material is wet, the gel could end up on baby's skin and possibly in baby's mouth, leading to skin irritation and gastrointestinal irritation, if ingested. Furthermore, because SAP allows diapers to hold so much liquid while keeping your baby's bottom dry, your child may have a harder time recognizing when she is wet and have a harder time potty training. In contrast, the cloth diaper industry claims that parents can expect a cloth-diapered baby to toilet train a year earlier than babies in disposables. In addition to SAP, animal studies have linked the emissions from the plastics and fragrances in disposable studies with respiratory problems and symptoms of asthma. And finally, in 2000 the biocide tributyltin was detected in eight brands of disposable diapers. Even though tributyltin can be absorbed through the skin and lead to immune system damage and disrupted hormone function, diapers are not routinely tested for the substance.