Breastfeeding? Check! Organic onesies? Check! Natural and organic homemade baby food? Check!
Would you like to make one more "green" choice? Take the step that will drastically reduce your environmental impact: Go Cloth.
The Impact of Disposable:
- Have a baby in disposables? Their waste is equal to about 50 percent of all waste produced in your household.
- Disposable diapers represent about 4 percent of the nation's solid waste by weight, making them the third most common solid waste item after newspapers and beverage and food containers. ...But you can recycle the other two!
- 5 million tons of untreated waste and a total of 2 billion tons of urine, feces, plastic and paper are added to landfills annually. In order for those marketed as "biodegradable" to break down, they must be exposed to oxygen and sunlight, which usually does not occur at a landfill. And that untreated waste may leach into our groundwater!
- In the United States alone, we use 18 billion diapers annually. This is 82,000 tons of plastic a year and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp -- 250,000 trees.
- Worried about drought? The manufacture and use of disposable diapers amounts to 2.3 times more water wasted than cloth.
- Synthetic: Let's not forget what these really are with the easy to swallow term "disposable": chemically fabricated diapers. They take 250-500 years to decompose, we think. They haven't been around long enough to be sure, or to know what the environmental impacts will be once they do!
- Waste management: Fecal matter and urine belong in sewage treatment plants, not landfills. Believe it or not, disposable diaper packages often instruct consumers to flush the solid contents, but less than one percent of disposable diaper consumers do so. It's a must for cloth diaper consumers! Then, the treated water is much more environmentally friendly than that which leaches from soiled and landfilled diapers.
- Reuseable: The average prefold cloth diaper can be washed 100-150 times, and once "overused" can be given a second life as a perfect rag.
- Reuseable, Part 2: Pocket diapers can be washed just as often, and are still perfectly good to use on your second or even third child, or to pass on to a friend!
- Organic Options: 25 percent of the world's insecticides are used in cotton production. Organic cotton helps rural farmers in soil management while protecting the local community and water supply from the dangers of pesticides.
Baby's eco-footprint doesn't have to be larger than yours; there are plenty of ways to go green, while still working with your budget and comfort level!
How:
- Diaper Services: In more areas than you'd expect! Convenient and cost-effective, and especially helpful in areas where there are drought concerns. The diaper service supplies the prefolds and some covers. Check into the National Association of Diaper Services for help.
- At Home: self-sufficient and already have loads of laundry? Tossing in the diapers is a breeze.
- Prefolds: The traditional way to cloth diaper, it is also the most economical. Buy prefold cloth diapers in bulk, and simply fold and fasten and then toss on a diaper cover. You wash the prefold diapers yourself. Or, some diaper services allow you to mix in your own, but check first.
- Pocket Diapers: Slide an absorbent insert into a pocket diaper, and the lining wicks the moisture from baby's skin. These fasten much like disposable, so they're fantastic for converts. My current favorite is bumGenius One Size Cotton Diaper. I'm using it overnight for my 2 1/2 year old potty trainee, and will also be able to use it once my second child is born.
- Flushable: again, put waste where it belongs, either by using a flushable liner on your cloth diaper, or by using a diaper such as the gDiaper, which is also compostable (urine only)! Convenient for cloth diapering outside the home.
- Wipes: don't forget to reuse the wipes! While they don't create the huge waste that disposable diapers do, disposable wipes are not eco-friendly. While you're washing the diapers anyhow, why not add cloth wipes? It will also give you an excuse to make your own wipe solution!
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