Over seven months into my first pregnancy, I have many concerns and internal conflicts about how to best raise my baby. Which car seat has the best safety rating? Do I want a bassinet or a hammock or to sleep with baby in my bed? Epidural or not? And as a die-hard green gal, there’s the question of diapers: cloth or disposable. On the one hand, disposable diapers take up precious space in our landfills, are sometimes filled with chemicals that are not good for sensitive baby skin and are costly (resource wise) to produce. Cloth diapers, on the other hand, are reusable, but ultimately one has to wash them which puts more feces into grey and black water, as well as uses an enormous amount of water. Ultimately, it comes down to a few factors. How many diapers does your baby go through? Are you willing to wash poo out of diapers? Which is more finacially feasible? What’s worse, petrified poop trapped in a landfill or contaminating the tiny amount of potable water left on earth’s surface? While normally I would be up to calculating the cost-benefit analysis of each item, I can happily report that I don’t have to! There are plenty of middle-of-the road options for parents who care about the environment and their bank accounts! Here are a few of them:
- Chemical free diapers Seventh generation diapers are available at most grocery stores (you may have to look in your health foods aisle) and run at almost the same price as most name-brand diapers, such as Pampers. They come in seven sizes and, most importantly, are chlorine-free, latex-free and completely hypo-allergenic. The down-side to these diapers is that without the chemical AGM, they don’t absorb as well as your name-brand diapers and some people may not like the light brown shade they come in.
- Bio-degradable disposable diapers Tushies Disposable Diapers, Nature Babycare Diapers, and Nature Boy and Girl are all happily bio-degradable and free of any harmful chemicals. They’re great for eco-chic parents who have enough money to support their habit. Depending on the brand, these diapers can be up to around twice the price of name-brand diapers and four times the price of your generic (ie Wal-mart) diaper. Another downside is that while these diapers may biodegrade well in your compost-bin, nothing biodegrades easily in an airtight landfill.
- Bio-liners Bio-liners are an improvement on your regular old cloth diapers. These diapers come with bio-degradeable, flushable liners in small and large sizes.
- Old and Improved Cloth Diapers Not unlike the above bio-liners, cloth diapers now-a-days are sold with liners, only these are made with a washable cloth (come in terry cloth, hemp, you name it). Unlike cloth diapers of old, new cloth diapers come in a variety of really fun, water-proof colors and close by means of buttons, velcro, zippers and more. Check out Fuzzi Bunz. These diapers are an investment. They run from ten to thirty dollars per diaper (including a reusable insert), but usually last for three years! That means even if you buy the most expensive cloth diapers, spending a whopping $300, you’ll still be saving yourself a few thousand dollars compared to the cost of name-brand disposable diapers. Even at a great deal, say $10 for 20 diapers, that’s still at least $1500 on diapers alone if you’re baby only goes through 3000 diapers from birth until age 3.
Think about it! You’re baby will likely go through between 3000 and 5000 diapers from until age three (depending on your source). That’s a lot of contact with your baby and a lot of poop to pawn off on the earth! Now to address wipes…
I used cloth diapers for my first girl, and it was easy peasy. I had no problems getting them clean because I did not buy the prefolded/sewn diapers; I used the thin sheet-like rectangles and folded them to fit her as she grew. After washing, I hung them out to dry regardless of weather and often by the time I was done hanging the last one, I went back and took off the first ones which were dry already!