Friday, October 5, 2007

Green your Diapers Baby!

No I don't have a newborn and I don't plan on having one again, however if I had to do it all over again, I would do it so different....

So I chatted w/ my friend Mary who is also a Greenie like us and she is currently using Cloth Diapers for her little man. She too was overwhelmed with how much diapers fill up our landfills and how they take up to 500 yrs to decompose! Yes, 500 years!!!! Incredible! Don't believe me? Watch them decompose (or not) here.

Mary likes to use cloth during the day and chlorine free diapers at night. You can get the chlorine free diapers from Seventh Generation and although pricey, if you offset it with cloth your still putting less chlorine into the ground when you throw it out. She also has pointed out to me that once she switched to cloth her garbage was cut nearly in half!! Not only is she saving money on the diapers, but on her garbage bill too!!


I have found myself fascinated with the gDiapers I've seen at Fred Meyers in my natural foods section. They come in a nice looking little kit pictured here. They promote themselves as a flushable diaper and honestly, they look like a giant maxi-pad! Seriously. They are not cloth or disposable, they are flushable. Which raises the question, Why can't we have this same product available in a feminine Pad?? (Again, I'm still growing accustomed to my reusable pads)
Anyway, the gDiapers say this about themselves, "gDiapers consist of a washable, cotton outer pant and a plastic free flushable refill. They are made of breathable material just like sports clothing. So, babies stay dry and happy and are far less likely to get diaper rash.
Can't flush? It's ok to toss flushable refills because they're plastic-free. Or garden compost the wet ones. They'll break down in 50-150 days."


I was impressed not only with the idea, but also the packaging. It came in a cardboard box you can recycle!!! I mean truly, why is everything wrapped in plastic these days?? Price I'm sure.
But for eco-friendliness they have truly won we over.

These gDiapers are a good option (just like the Seventh Generation ones) for those people who just cannot stomach cloth diapers. I think the next baby shower I attend they are getting gDiapers from me!!

My friend Mary would also like to point out that if you read the label on your current disposable diapers it clearly states that the waste (aka: the Poo) should be tossed into the toilet not in the trash with the diaper. Human waste cannot break down in landfills and should go down the toilet. It really says that--I checked at the store and it did. I was blown away! Let's face it, this is not something that we are taught as parents. "The instructions on a disposable diaper package advise that all fecal matter should be deposited in the toilet before discarding, yet less than one half of one percent of all waste from single-use diapers goes into the sewage system."

Diaper Facts:

  • Last year alone, 18-23 billion diapers went into landfills across America¹. That works out to be approximately 38,000 every minute and adds up to about 3.5 million tons of waste!

  • Disposable diapers contain traces of Dioxin, an extremely toxic by-product of the paper-bleaching process. It is a carcinogenic chemical, listed by the EPA as the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals. It is banned in most countries, but not the U.S.

  • Over 92% of all single-use diapers end up in a landfill.

  • In 1988, nearly $300 million dollars were spent annually just to discard disposable diapers, whereas cotton diapers are reused 50 to 200 times before being turned into rags.

  • In the first two years, the average baby will require between 5000 to 7000 diaper changes.

  • Disposable diapers in landfills can prevent water from soaking to the ground.

  • In 1991, an attempt towards recycling disposable diapers was made in the city of Seattle, involving 800 families, 30 day care centers, a hospital and a Seattle-based recycler for a period of one year. The conclusion made by Procter & Gamble was that recycling disposable diapers was not an economically feasible task on any scale.
Here are a few cloth diaper websites to consider: AngelBunz (Mary's top Choice), Jillians Drawers and bumGenuis.

Or like Mentioned above you can find the Chlorine free-diapers from Seventh Generation and gDiapers at your local store. Oh and if you want coupons for Seventh Generation (including the diapers) click here.

For more information on how to Green your baby check out Treehugger.

1 comment:

K Mom said...

Woot Woot for the Bum Genius 2.0 diapers. I am really loving mine. I only wish I had started using them when my first son was a newborn, I'd be so much richer now! Anyway, the switch to cloth was easier than I thought, and really isn't more than maybe an extra 15 minutes of work a day MAX. I highly recommend them!

karen
http://thesinglestep.blogspot.com