Cloth Diaper Info

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Why Cloth?

• Money savings!
• Environment issues 
• Health issues 
• Plus they are so cute!

Money savings!

With the economy in the condition it is in everyone is looking to cut back expense wherever possible. The saving you get from switching to cloth is a great place to cut back in your spending. Think about how much you spend weekly on diapers. Now times by 52 and that is what you are spending per year! I completed my cloth stash for my daughter under $300 and had all I needed (You can do it for less than that! ). I just had a baby in November and have not spent any money on diapers for her. She just uses her older sisters because they were still in great condition! What a savings!

The average cost for using disposables is about $20 per week or about $1040 per year (at least!). That’s about $2600 for a 2.5-year diapering period for each child (more if you are using premium diaper and more if your child is not potty trained by 2.5). An added bonus is that cloth diapers can be used for additional children. Once you are finished with the diapering stage in your life, if you have good-quality used diapers, they can usually be sold to recover part of your cost. Craigs list and diaperswappers.com are both places you can resale your old diapers.

Disposable diaper brands are announcing price increases at record rate due to the use of oil in the manufacturing of disposables. So prices of disposables keep increasing and are not about to stop!

Cloth wipes are another area to save. It is estimated that you will spend about $700 on wipes in a 2.5 year period. These are expenses you never even realize add up so fast! Cloth wipes are so easy. If you are already using cloth diaper you don’t want to put the wipes in a separate area to throw away later. It’s easier to just put them all in your pail liner or wetbag together and wash them later.

Also because modern cloth diapers are more breathable than disposables you will experience less diaper rash so there will be no need to purchase diaper creams. Obviously some children might still experience an occasional rash but it will be much less frequently if at all. Some people will tell you the opposite, that cloth will cause more rashes. This is due to that fact that the plastic pants of the “olden days” didn’t breathe at all! I can personally tell you we have never experienced one diaper rash since our switch. Also my sister was using disposables on her son when he was first born until he grew into his cloth diapers. I can tell you I have never seen a redder bum! Once the switch was made he cleared right up. It is surprising how many chemicals are next to your little ones most sensitive parts when you use disposables. This is discussed a little further down.

Basically you can spend as little or as much as you want to on cloth diapers, but even the expensive cloth diapers will cost less than disposables! Then when you are done either resale them or save them for the next child!

But when you weigh in the costs and effects of extra laundry, aren’t cloth diapers just as expensive and just as bad on the environment?

When I switched to cloth diapers I never saw a raise in my bills. I purchased a container of mountain green detergent and it has lasted me over a year already. I do an extra wash every 2-3 days. That is it! At the time I started to use cloth diapers I was also trying to make myself more aware of conserving energy in other ways. So I was actually doing less loads of laundry per week because I was only washing once I had a full load. Also something to keep in mind is that you will be doing less “blow-out” laundry. Due to the terrible elastic on disposables you will be changing a lot of outifits that get poopy because the disposable did not contain the mess. The back and leg elastic on cloth diapers and covers is far superior and will greatly reduce if not fully eliminate the need to change your childs clothing multiple times a day. Some people even experience a cost decrease in their bills and a decrease in laundry due to this.

And as for environmental issues, the water and energy that you use to wash diapers doesn’t compare to the horrible effects that disposable diapers have on nature. Forests are cut down and turned into pulp, then bleached (adding dangerous chemicals and gases to the water and air) just in the production period. Massive amounts of water, more than you use in your laundry, are also used in the disposable diaper-making process. Fossil fuels are used to transport each and every diaper in its journey from the factory to your home. A good argument I heard for this once was “if cloth is worse for the environment then why don’t we all wear disposable clothing.” If you look into the argument that cloth is just as bad for the environment you will always find at the heart of the study that it is being conducted by a major diaper company. Of course they want you to purchase their product. Diapers are big business.

Then once that diaper has spent a few hours on your baby it goes right to a landfill to sit for hundreds of years. Disposable diapers represent 30% of non-biodegradable waste in our landfills. Human waste from cloth diapers is sent to sewer treatment plants, not to landfills. Human waste can be properly treated in the sewer treatment plants. On every case of disposable diapers it actually says to empty solids in the toilet before throwing out. Human waste does not belong in landfills

Environmental factors

• Over 8,000 tons of disposable diapers are added to our landfills every day 
• They take 500 years or more to decompose.
• Every year over 1,000,000 metric tons of wood pulp and over 70,000 metric tons of plastic are used by the Manufacturer to make disposable diapers.
• The American Petroleum Institute states that over 3 billion gallons of oil were used to produce 18 million disposable diapers.
• The U.S. alone uses 27 "billion" disposable diapers a year.
• Almost 8,000 disposable diapers are used per child for the approx. 3 years of diapering.
• One baby can produce up to 2 tons of landfill waste using disposable diapers.
• Harsh bleaches and cleaning agents used at diaper plants can cause damage to the environment.
• Serious threat of contamination from disposable diapers because of human sewage going into landfills.
• Disposal of human waste into your garbage is prohibited and instructions on disposable diaper packaging recommend that you shake out any fecal matter into the toilet before disposing of it.
• Viruses found in human feces can pose a threat to our water supplies and wildlife.
• Each baby in disposable diapers consumes 4.5 trees (Based on only 2 years in diapers.)

HEALTH FACTORS

The chemicals in disposables diapers are staggering. It is something that many parents don’t even think about. Did you know that a chemical present in disposables was removed from tampons due to it causing toxic shock syndrome (TSS). It is the gel crystals in disposables called sodium polyacrylate. It is lethal to cats if inhaled, and I spoke with a woman that told me she switched to cloth after her dog ate a disposable and actually died. She knew after that incident that having clean chemical free cloth diapers on her child was the best for him. Also Dioxin the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is another scary chemical in disposables. It is a by product of the bleaching process in disposables. Disposables have been linked to respiratory problems due to some of their chemicals. Also diaper rash rates have steadily increased as the rate of disposables has increased. It has gone from 7 to 77% since 1955. So all those who argue that cloth causes diaper rash, think again. It seem basically common sense that it can not be good for our little ones to have chemicals like this against their skin for basically 24 hours a day for the first few years of their lives. Do some research and it will really surprise you and most likely infuriate you that there is not more regulation on this subject.

Anyone that has a toddler will know that there will be a few mornings that you wake up to a diaperless child :) I am glad that I can rest assured that my child hasn’t ripped apart a chemical filled diaper and possibly ingested any of it. That is a worry no mother needs to add to her list! Also I might add that the aplix (strong Velcro) or snaps on cloth are no comparison to the weak tabs on disposable diapers. So while your child obviously can not rip apart a cloth diaper if they take it off at night, most likely they wont be able to get if off in the first place. Disposables have also been linked to male infertility and Asthma! That is so scary to me! Male infertility has undergone a huge rise in the past 25 years. Not a coincidence.

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