Comments on: Use Cloth Diapers (64/365)

By: Joanna

Joanna — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 03:13:54 +0000

@Laundry Lady: I always wonder that same thing about people’s clothing, etc. Plus, the cloth-is-just-as-bad-for-the-environment set always complains about the water. To that I say “do you not flush the toilet when you use it?” How do you think that’s flushing.

As for the gross factor, we’re cloth diapering an 8 month old right now. When she was exclusively breastfed we did absolutely nothing to the diapers prior to washing. Just took them off and tossed them in an old trash can that was lined with a wet bag (like a trash bag but reusable). On diaper day it all (including the wet bag) got tossed into the washer and off we went. Now that she’s on solids it’s even easier and less stinky. Since her poop is solid it just falls off into the toilet. No sprayer, no scraping, nothing. Then we toss the diaper, free of poop, into the same pail. It doesn’t stink at all b/c there’s no poop. We do use disposables at day care and actually toss that poop in the toilet as well b/c I don’t want it sitting around in a trash can. (Now THAT is gross!) IT really is unbelievably easy. The only downside was the transition period between ebf poop & solids poop. Oh, and no blowouts with cloth. None. We use bum genius primarily. (Though I also love fuzzibunz!)

By: jim

jim — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:40:09 +0000

As others have pointed out, landfills are designed to capture and contain the garbage so that it shouldn’t escape into the water table.
The EPA has a big pile of rules that landfills must adhere to and laws do regulate landfills. But that doesn’t mean they are always obeyed properly or that the rules are enforced aggressively.
While landfills *shouldn’t* contaminate the environment, they *could* if things don’t work properly and the leaks aren’t found and fixed.

By: Kate

Kate — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:04:47 +0000

I have grown children, but I was an on again-off again cloth diaperer. Were I to do it again, I probably would do the same thing.
We have a huge problem in this country with the idea that something that is corn-based is biodegradable. It is–under optimum biodegrading circumstances. Which almost never happens. I went to a conference that was all hyped up about the fact that it was earth friendly because it was using corn-based throwaway cups. I brought two of them home and left one out in the yard and put one in my compost pile. Two years later, the cup in the yard is still a cup and the cup in the compost pile is crunched from the pitchfork but still a recognizable cup. Either would (or should) be considered litter if I threw it out my car window.

By: zoranian

zoranian — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:56:27 +0000

I cloth diapered my son for about 9 months, and it was relatively easy and definitely cost effective, but when he started crawling he got a horrible rash around his thighs. I’ve tried it a few times since then and he still gets the rash, so I think he developed a reaction to the elastic or it the cloth is just too thick between his legs. He has very dry, relatively sensitive skin. Apparently the disposables are better for his particular skin sensitivities.

As far as # 44, the laundry lady, most newer landfills are lined and covered so that the garbage (much of which is full of toxic chemicals, not just diapers) does not leach into the water table. One of the main environmental impacts is actually that disposable diapers are shipped all over the country (using oil for gasoline) and that petroleum-based non-renewable resources are used to manufacture the super-absorbent chemicals in diapers, including most of the “green” chlorine free diapers. With regard to landfills, we would make a lot more impact mandating recycling programs for businesses than switching to cloth, eventually even the cloth diapers do get thrown away.

By: Laundry Lady

Laundry Lady — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:18:12 +0000

@#26 Kevin
Actually the problem is that disposable diapers do contaminate the water table because they are filled with raw sewage. The waste is supposed to be dumped out and then the diaper thrown away, but almost no one does that. Instead we wrap them in more layers of plastic to cover the smell assuring that they will never biodegrade. The average American child will produce 1 ton of garbage in the form of diapers and disposable wipes (not including diaper genie bags) before potty training. (This assumes potty training at age 2, and many children don’t. That stat is courtesy of Real Diapers and Kelly’s Closet).

I will admit whenever anyone says that the environmental factor of additional washing makes cloth diapers equal to disposables I wonder if those people also use only disposable plates and cookware as well as disposable clothing. After all, clothing and cloth diapers are made of many of the same ingredients and I’ve yet to have anyone propose that it would be more environmentally friendly to throw away my baby’s clothing rather than wash it.

By: Lilly

Lilly — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:45:14 +0000

@#43 Roberta
Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to diapers before I was pregnant, so I probably didn’t even realize anything other than disposable diapers had ever existed. For being a reasonably intelligent person, I can be pretty dense when it comes to things outside my sphere of actual experience (case in point – I was in college before I realized there was a such thing as homemade waffles… I thought all waffles came in a box labeled Eggo.)
I’m sure I would have found out about cloth diapers eventually, once I got involved in all the mommy forums… but I literally remember reading about cloth diapers on here before I even knew I was pregnant (I suspected but hadn’t tested yet) and spending an entire weekend researching all the different types and bookmarking cloth diapering sites.

By: EngineerMom

EngineerMom — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:03:19 +0000

I always get the giggles when someone starts going off about the “sanitary” aspect of running soiled cloth diapers through a washing machine. Clearly, you have never actually changed a poop-splosion If the diaper is the only thing that gets dirty, consider yourself fortunate!

I tried cloth diapering with both my kids. It didn’t work, even when we had the wonderful gift of a diaper service (does all the diaper laundry for us) with my daughter. My kids pee like crazy. I swear my son had a bladder the size of an adult on the day he was born, and my daughter is the same. By the time I had enough diaper thickness just to keep the kid dry for an hour or two, there was so much material between their legs it was ridiculous. And don’t even get me started on nighttime wetting. We tried everything with my son (microfiber inserts in cloth diapers, triple-stuffed cloth diapers, Huggies Overnights, etc.), and finally just bought enough extra sheets that we could change the bedding daily until he was old enough for the “UnderJams” which seem to hold more urine. The kid would just not wake up if he was wet – we’d go in to get him in the morning and he’d be sitting in a puddle!

Cloth diapers are a great alternative, definitely much cuter than disposables if nothing else, but sometimes they really don’t work for certain children. Add to that the fact that infant and toddler clothing is no longer cut to fit around bulkier cloth diapers. My kids as infants were in the 99th percentile for height and weight. That means my 7-month-old is growing out of the 18-month clothing and will likely be in 2T stuff by her first birthday, just like her brother was. No room for bulky cloth diapers in the T-sizes!

By: Roberta

Roberta — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:02:29 +0000

Lilly at #27 – I’m just curious that you say you’d never heard of cloth diapers until Trent mentioned it. What do you think people used until the mid-1960′s or so when the first disposables came out?

By: Baley

Baley — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:26:03 +0000

Apparently some comments are too long and get stuck in moderation. Oh well. Most issues have been addressed, but I’d like to add for the one person who asked that an easy (and frugal) way to get diapers is to buy them in the “one-size” size so they last from close to birth (about 3-4 weeks for small babies) to potty training. We actually used disposables for the newborn period, then just needed one set of 20 diapers for the rest of the diaper days. (And the disposables were all given to us at our baby shower). As to the environment, I suppose if landfill space weren’t a concern, maybe we wouldn’t need to worry about diapers filling up landfills and not biodegrading, but in addition to that there is the production costs to consider. Only one cloth diaper is needed in place of a couple hundred disposables, for one. Also, there are toxic chemicals in disposable diapers that aid in their absorption capabilities. Plus, raw sewage isn’t supposed to go to the landfills, it’s supposed to be flushed in the toilet and go to proper sewage treatment facilities. All of these factors are negatives for the environment, but if that’s not important for some people, there are still lots of other reasons to use cloth.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:18:52 +0000

*I mean “now that our daughter is down to a few diaper changes a day, MAYBE we’ll try it again”*

and “extra energy/water consumption from REUSABLES*”

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:14:58 +0000

“My doulla friend (cloth diapering 3 kids) is adamant that dunking cloth diapers in the toilet is outdated advice that is not necessary with today’s washers. Every site I have read so far about cloth diapers agrees.”

I was taking instructions from my wife, who was likely getting them from her mother (so yea, the advice was 20+ years old :) )
I’m not sure she would go for not-pretreating them. We got standard trifolds from Babies-R-Us. Never tried the more expensive kind, and now that our daughter is down to a few diaper changes a day, we’ll start again. But the convenience factor of disposables is a strong one!

Regarding extra energy/water consumption from disposables, I haven’t run numbers, but its got to be just pennies per load. I think the washer and dryer cost less than $100 a year to operate total. Add on that, with a new family member you were bound to increase the laundry anyway…

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:32:49 +0000

@Golfing Girl:

“However, it’s hard to put a price on the environment.”

Again, I ask: How do disposable diapers harm the environment?

They end up in a landfill. Agreed. We bury them under 50 feet of dirt. Agreed.

Then what?

They sit there for 10,000 years.

So what? How is the “environment harmed” by having diapers sit under 50 feet of dirt and rock for an indefinite period of time?

What’s 50 feet beneath your feet right now? Is it clay? Sand? Granite? Garbage? More importantly: Does it matter? If so, why? I submit that it does NOT in fact matter. The surface above it is plenty usable. I’m saying this whole “environment” nonsense is overblown, and there’s nothing wrong with burying garbage (with the caveat that hazardous materials are diverted appropriately, and the water table is protected).

By: Telephus44

Telephus44 — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:05:53 +0000

I did some cloth diapering with my first son. Overall, it was a positive experience, but no one else wanted to deal with it – my daycare or my MIL who was watching him on a regular basis. I figured we used cloth diapers about 25% of the time. Now that we’re expecting #2, I realize that the start-up costs to purchase more cloth diapers aren’t going to save money if I use them that rarely. Unless I manage to use them about half the time, it’s cheaper to buy disposable. This is also the last child for us, so I don’t have the cost savings from using them for multiple children.

It’s something I enjoy doing, and if I were a SAHM I would do in a heartbeat. But in my current situation I have a hard time justifying it. I do use cloth moon pads, and have no problem with the ick factor.

By: tentaculistic

tentaculistic — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:24:47 +0000

Oh – one other thing that would be of concern with working moms is that (by report of coworkers and family) most daycare won’t do cloth diapers. They require disposables – easier on them, and they don’t have to launder or keep track of whose diaper is whose, etc.

By: tentaculistic

tentaculistic — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:19:35 +0000

#29 – “It’s one thing to wipe up after the baby, it’s another to dunk the diaper in the toilet prior to throwing it in the bin. Blech.”

My doulla friend (cloth diapering 3 kids) is adamant that dunking cloth diapers in the toilet is outdated advice that is not necessary with today’s washers. Every site I have read so far about cloth diapers agrees. So I think maybe you were going about cloth diapering using (word-of-mouth?) methods from 20 years ago… it might not be nearly as gross to cloth diaper as it used to be. Plus new cloth diapers are just adorable. This is passed-on wisdom, but I figure a natural childbirth doulla would be up on the latest in natural child-rearing :)

As to whether it’s grosser to wash poop-covered diaper in a washing machine, well that’s what washing machines do, and apparently it gets the diapers clean and doesn’t contaminate the next load of clothes. So it might be worth re-considering cloth diapers, if your kid(s) are still of that age.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:17:21 +0000

@ Golfing Girl – for what size diaper? As they get bigger, the cost per diaper rises quite a bit…

By: Golfing Girl

Golfing Girl — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:33:34 +0000

My disposable diapers (Target brand) run 14.4 cents/diaper. And Trent doesn’t factor the extra energy and water used to wash the cloth diapers. It’s probably closer to a very small savings when given that. However, it’s hard to put a price on the environment.

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:12:11 +0000

My husband and I are expecting our first, and while he’s not exactly enthusiastic over the cloth diapering plan, he’s willing to give it a try. I hope to make it as easy as I can on him at the beginning, since I changed my first cloth diaper when I was five (Mom hurt her back, and she was supervising, but she couldn’t move without wanting to cry). I honestly don’t think I realized there was another kind of diaper until my youngest sibling was almost out of diapers. And those were the diaper pins and plastic pants kind of cloth diapers.
As an added bonus, which I think I’ve mentioned here before, my mother in law refuses to have anything to do with cloth diapering. Which, sadly, means she won’t be able to baby sit. I’m brokenhearted. Or something like that ;D

By: SwingCheese

SwingCheese — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:05:41 +0000

@Lily (24) and @Gillian (19): I made the switch almost 10 years ago now, and I regret nothing. And although I have had to spend a few times over the course of that decade (to buy more pads, for example), it is nothing compared to what I’d have spent if I were buying disposables. In my experience, the “Ew, gross” factor is what turns people off the idea, but once I got over that, it’s been smooth sailing.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:50:50 +0000

I consider myself cheap/frugal, but cloth diapers were too gross for me, and gross or inconvenient for my wife. We both really wanted to, and we both couldn’t stomach it. It’s one thing to wipe up after the baby, it’s another to dunk the diaper in the toilet prior to throwing it in the bin. Blech.
The one linked above, for example, costs $17.95, so you’d have to use it about 90 times for it to be less expensive per use than cloth diapers.
You mean less expensive than disposable, right?

We estimate that our children would use one of the cloth diapers about every three days while on diapers (up until about two years old), so, per child, a single cloth diaper would get about 240 uses.
This sentence is horribly confusing to me. It almost sounds like you’re saying you used the same diaper for 3 days when I think you mean that you got about 240 uses out of a given diaper over 2 years. Using the $18 per diaper above, that cost you about $0.08 per use.