Why Cloth Diaper?

It's the Economy

In this economic climate, cloth diapering is becoming more and more popular as one of the best ways to save money with a new baby.

For basically $150, you could get 6 quality diaper covers, 6 dozen prefolds and be set for about 6 months. When the baby grows, you would need to spend another $150 for the next size up that could last all the way until potty training! So for $300 this baby and any other babies that may come! And prefolds make the best rags on Earth. So you are using these supplies for decades.

By the way, my children both potty trained earlier than most too. In fact, my second child potty trained himself at 2 years old, I kid you not! They feel the wetness much more easily with cloth.

Disposable diapers range in prices, so I went to www.diaper.com and chose Luvs diapers to compare because they are one of the cheaper brands. Each size has a different unit price, so I just averaged the price for the first two years of a baby's diaper life. I came up with $.13 per diaper for newborn to 4 months and then about $.18 per diaper from that point on (as they weigh more, it will increase all the way up to $.24 per diaper.) A newborn goes through about 8-12 diapers a day and then about 4 months age and older about 6-8 diaper changes a day. So with these numbers in mind, I come up with $810.88 for two years. Most disposable diaper users will potty train at around 3 years, adding on about $524.16 (taking into consideration the diaper for +27 lbs at $.24/diaper.)

With cloth, if your child goes to 3 years (and it can happen) you would only tack on another $200 for the larger diapers.

Cloth for 3 years=$500
Disposables for 3 years=$1,335.04

Even if you take into consideration the heating and water cost of washing (based on current washing/drying machines is so minimal that we are talking pennies,) you would then take into consideration extra garbage bags and extra trips to the store using gas for your car (again, pennies especially if you are already going to the store.)

Which leads me to my next reason for cloth diapering...

Health

There was a study done that showed a correlation between disposable diapers and breathing problems in mice. "The results demonstrate that some types of disposable diapers emit mixtures of chemicals that are toxic to the respiratory tract. Disposable diapers should be considered as one of the factors that might cause or exacerbate asthmatic conditions." This was published in the Archives of Environmental Health, Sept/Oct 1999.

A full synopsis of this study was reported in Mothering Magazine, Issue 98, Jan/Feb 2000, or you could just check out the website: http://www.mothering.com/articles/new_baby/diapers/diaper-asthma.html

Disposable diapers have been linked to male infertility as well. There was a study in Germany that found disposable diapers raised the scrotal temperature in a male infant, while the reusable cloth did not. On a developing male genitalia, this link might explain the rise in infertility rates in males over the past 25 years.

Check out the BBC article explaining the German study in detail:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/941174.stm

There has been a lot of talk about the sodium polyacrylate (the super absorbent gel) that has been untested for safety in children's disposable diapers, but have been linked in the past to toxic shock syndrome, allergic reactions and is very harmful and potentially lethal to pets. Why are we even using this on our babies? And of course there is the bleaching agent, dioxin, which according to the EPA is known to cause damage to the central nervous system, kidneys and liver.

The Environment

The Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated about 18 billion diapers are thrown into landfills every year. And a 1998 study by the EPA found that diapers make up 3.4 million tons of waste, or 2.1 percent of U.S. garbage in landfills that year.

There have been controversial studies done on the water usage of cleaning cloth diapers saying that it uses too much energy and water to be the effective "green" choice. But if you look at the water usage every three days of running a load in a normal current washing machine (I'm not talking about your parents 25 year old washer!) That's like flushing your toilet one extra time each day. Compare this to a dirty diaper taking 250 years to breakdown in a landfill and leaching bacteria laden fecal matter into groundwater.

Convenience

This is an argument that has to be decided for each individual. I find having diapers always on hand to be far more convenient than fitting a giant box of diapers into my grocery cart each week. There is a bit of a learning curve because you have never done it before and it takes a bit of effort to learn a system that works best for your family.

We use pocket diapers. This morning I took the cloth waterproof tote that houses my diapers and threw everything into the washing machine. Used 1 of the detergent I would normally use in a laundry cycle and fixed the washer on sanitize, extra rinse, extra soil and low spin. A few hours later, I take the 20 pocket covers and set them out on my patio chairs to dry in the sunlight. I put the inserts and wipes in my dryer on high for an hour (I'll try to wash a load of towels and wait to start the dryer until the towels are ready too because inserts are too small of a load.) A few hours later, I stuff all 20 diapers and set in the basket for the next 3-4 days of diaper changing. I'd say that each part of the process took about 2 minutes. So maybe I spent 6 minutes total?

And because I tend toward the lazy side of things, I use rice paper liners to make poop removal that much easier. I just dump the liner in the toilet, flush and place dirty diaper in bag that is located in the laundry room. This way, I don't even have to worry about stain removal (if that was an issue for me anyway, which it isn't after 3 kids, soon to be 4!)

Even with disposables, you are supposed to dump the poop in the toilet before throwing away. I've used disposables in pinch for travel and whatnot and I couldn't imagine leaving the stinky contents. The smell would just linger. With cloth, the only smell is urine and it isn't nearly as strong in cloth as it is in paper. I find disposables to be much stinkier in general.