Cloth Diapering

As of Sunday, we've officially switched to cloth diapers. So exciting! We had been using gDiapers until Eliot grew out of the small size very quickly (he's a chunky monkey) and then we used Seventh Generation and Nature Babycare disposables for a while. We really liked the gDiapers (very new and innovative) but found them to be a little bit expensive for us. You have to purchase both the 'little g' pants (at $16.99 - $18.99 each) and the liners ($14.49 for 32-40 liners) which together cost more than either disposables or cloth. We couldn't in good conscience keep using disposables, so we switched to cloth. Currently, we have a stash of bum genius 3.0 and Happy Heinys, as well as some different inserts, three PUL wetbags and about 30 cloth wipes. The whole shebang cost about $450 which would have been around 8 months of disposables, not including wipes. Considering that he will likely be in diapers for another year and a half to two years, it was completely worth it. *** Shameless Pitch: We purchased our diapers from Abby's Lane. They have fantastic customer service! ***


So far, I'm totally in love with them. Both the bum genius and the Happy Heinys work great ~ no leaks whatsoever! They're super soft and I imagine that they feel much better for Eliot than paper/plastic disposables. Washing them has been very easy - his first poopy diaper came completely clean with no stains after a cold rinse and a cold wash cycle with 1/4 the amount of detergent recommended. We used Purex Free and Clear for our first couple of loads but I have a huge order of Charlie's Soap on the way, which we plan on using regularly. We think we'll end up washing every other or every third day and we will definitely be line drying, rather than using our dryer. The cloth wipes are really nice, also. I made my own wipe solution (water, olive oil, 1/4 tsp. castile soap, 4-5 drops tea tree essential oil, 4-5 drops lavender essential oil and a splash of vinegar) and we just spray the wipe before we use it and toss it in the wet bag with the dirty diaper.

In terms of environmental impact, there is currently some debate whether cloth or disposables are better. A recent study by an advisory board to the UK Environment Agency came to the conclusion that cloth diapers had equal the impact of disposable diapers. (You can read the whole 200+ page report here.) They found that since cloth diapers are made primarily of cotton, (requiring pesticides, fertilizer and significant amounts of water) and they require both electricity and water to clean, they were not any better for the environment than disposables.

However, in my opinion, there are many things cloth diaper users can do to lessen their impact. For example, we wash our diapers in cold water rather than hot, we use an earth-friendly detergent, we wash them only when we have a full load, we will be line-drying our diapers and we will be purchasing Windsource® energy from Xcel Energy, which is clean wind-generated electricity. Did you know that washing cloth diapers at home uses about 70 gallons of water every three days, which is about the same as a toilet-trained child or adult flushing the toilet five to six times a day? Our additional laundry will equal about 3 extra loads per week.

Another advantage to cloth diapers is that they prevent vast amounts of waste (including human feces) from being deposited in our landfills. Mothering magazine proposed that there is a "...serious threat of contamination from disposable diapers, because of human sewage going into landfills. The disposal of human waste in residential garbage is technically prohibited, and instructions on disposable diaper packaging recommend that you shake out any fecal matter into the toilet before disposing of it; but in practice this is almost never done. Live viruses in the feces, such as the polio vaccine, can live in landfills for a long period, and if there were ever any leakage, could potentially contaminate a community's drinking water."

Over 18 billion disposable diapers are thrown in landfills each year, taking as many as 500 years to decompose. Disposable diapers make up the third largest source of solid waste in landfills, after newspapers and food & beverage containers. According to the Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corporation, it takes nearly 82,000 tons of plastic and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp, or a quarter-million trees, to manufacture the disposable diapers that are used in the United States.

Lastly, there are huge benefits for babies being diapered in cloth versus disposables. As I discussed in a previous post, there are toxic chemicals in disposable diapers including traces of dioxin (an extremely toxic by-product of the paper-bleaching process which is a carcinogenic chemical, listed by the EPA as the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals - banned in most countries but not the U.S.), tributyl-tin or TBT, (a toxic pollutant known to cause hormonal problems in humans and animals) and sodium polyacrylate (a type of super absorbent polymer (SAP), which becomes a gel-like substance when wet). In addition to limiting Eliot's exposure to these chemicals, cloth diapers also help him "feel" wet which should assist in potty training, they are gentler on his skin, they "breathe" better than disposables and they're cuter (that part is just my expert opinion).

We've decided that the best choice for our family is cloth - what about you?