Baby diapers Plastic or cloth?

[Wilson513]

Diaper service is worth its price. Like braces or psychotherapy. If you got the dough, do it.

[MissingAll4Seasons]

Heck Wilson, if I had the dough, I'd have someone come in and do *all* my laundry and cleaning

[yeajustme]

In responce to the OP - I think we're starting to see 'green' as vogue.
Ive met plenty of mamas who go on about how eco-friendly they are, how they just spent $60 on a unbleached hemp shirt for their kid or $50 on their sling to help with their attachment parenting...these same mamas get a blank look when I mention second hand stores, cloth diapers, recycling clothes, etc.
Green/eco is the 'thing' atm. They want the image.. (my eldest calls them ecoposers)

The plastic diaper debate kinda gets to me..seems like a sign of the times where the focus is on the individuals convienience rather than the greater good.

Some stats-
~The average american baby will use 6,000-10,000 diapers.
~Americans throw away 570 diapers per second. That's 49 million diapers per day.
~It takes around 80,000 pounds of plastic and over 200,000 trees a year to manufacture the disposable diapers for American babies alone
~The manufacture and use of disposable diapers amounts to 2.3 times more water wasted than cloth
~ Washing a full load of cloth diapers is comparable to the toilet being flushed 4-5 times a day for a week.

~Conventional Baby Diapers contain 2 chemicals of concern.
The first is Dioxin. When manufacturing the diaper one of the ingredients they use is bleach, and bleach creates Dioxin
The EPA considers Dioxin to be amongst the most toxic carcinogen.
Dioxin is banned in most countries except the United States.
2nd- TBT (tributyltin). Tributyltin is another toxic chemical that has been linked to hormonal disturbances, and harm to the immune system.

All that said..Ive breastfed and cloth diapered all 7 of my kids. I use recycled greywater for the first rinse and wash, fresh water for the rinse. (maybe 2 sinkfulls of water each day)

[CassandraNY]

I don't think many would relish the thought of hand-washing cloth diapers!
Nor is it probably a healthy idea....

And washing machines use a lot of power.

So unless you have a solar, wind power, or other green set-up, you're going to pollute.

Disposing of plastic diapers means dumping them in the trash. Then the issue is of how much space diapers displace in the sanitation trucks, and you must consider the percentage of total costs, in terms of energy, of operating such vehicle, as well as any other vehicles the diapers will be carried in on their way to the landfill.

Considering this, plastic does seem less environmentally taxing, as diapers do not take up much space/weight on trucks/trains/barges.....


Of course, there's the cost of manufacture for each, water-related issues, chemical contamination, and everything else other board members cited above, and possibly more!

Taking all factors into account, shouldn't it be possible to arrive at a conclusion based in mathematics??

[yeajustme]

Originally Posted by CassandraNY

Considering this, plastic does seem less environmentally taxing, as diapers do not take up much space/weight on trucks/trains/barges.....


Of course, there's the cost of manufacture for each, water-related issues, chemical contamination, and everything else other board members cited above, and possibly more!

Taking all factors into account, shouldn't it be possible to arrive at a conclusion based in mathematics??

Are you kidding me? Plastic diapers are enviromentally better because they take up less space?