The Impact of Disposables

"Approximately 90-95% of American babies use 27.4 billion single-use, plastic diapers every year. This generates 7.6 billion pounds of garbage each year—enough waste to fill Yankee Stadium 15 times over, or stretch to the moon and back 9 times. Every year.

Disposable diapers are the 3rd largest consumer item in landfills, and represent 30% of non-biodegradable waste. The only other items that outnumber the amount of disposables in landfills are newspapers and beverage and food containers.

Even though it may seem as if an individual child doesn’t contribute much to those numbers, babies do a lot of pooping. In fact, the average baby goes through 6-8 diapers a day. Unless you practice elimination communication, your baby will use between 6,500–10,000 diapers before potty training around 30 months old, creating about 2000 pounds of garbage over that time! That’s literally a ton of toxic waste." - https://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/dangers-of-disposable-diapers 

Meanwhile "With cloth diapering, you wash and re-use the diapers between changes, so the number of diapers you need for the first year will depend a great deal on how often you want to do laundry. You'll be changing the diapers at the same rate as with disposables, but the number you need to buy is much, much lower.

According to Diaper Junction, you'll need about 18 to 24 cloth diapers for the first 18 months of your baby's life.

After that time, you'll only need to keep about 12 diapers in rotation, since your little one will require fewer changes and may be learning potty training.

These figures assume you'll be doing laundry every two days or so. If you plan to go a little longer between laundry days, you'll need to buy more diapers."

- https://elinkrp.kleinisd.net/elinkrp/Students/BasicTransBoundarySearch.aspx

"Even factoring in the water and energy used to launder cloth diapers, in the full-cost accounting, from farm to factory to storefront, compared to cloth diapers, disposables:

• create 2.3 times more water waste,

• use 3.5 times more energy,

• use 8.3 times more non-renewable raw materials (like oil and minerals),

• use 90 times more renewable raw materials (like tree pulp and cotton),

• and use 4 to 30 times as much land for growing or mining raw materials."

Click here to learn more about the environmental and health impacts of disposable nappies/diapers.

Benefits of Cloth Nappies

• Cloth nappies/diapers aren't full of chemicals that can harm babies.

• Washable nappies can be cleaned between 400-800 times.

• Cloth nappies can be made from biodegradable materials (though PUL isn't biodegradable and is one of the most commonly used fabrics)

• They can be handed down from one child to another.

• Adjustable cloth nappies have snaps in different configurations so that they can be used from birth to the toddler years. Others use ties, which also make them adjustable as your child grows.

• The outside part of a cloth nappy can potentially be worn all day (barring big, messy accidents) while only the absorbent inside layer needs to be changed repeatedly.

• Cloth is generally more comfortable for babies, and less likely to cause rashes or other skin problems.

• In hot climates even lighter cloth can be used, allowing breathability as well as absorbance.