You have three diapering choices, each with a different impact on the
environment.
Disposables: The worst choice for the planet.
If your baby is in disposables for 2½ years, you'll use 20 trees and
420 gallons of petroleum. If you don't flip the poop into the toilet, you'll
be sending 1 ton of waste into the landfill untreated. Then you've got the
plastic and the byproduct of bleaching, dioxin — a chemical on the EPA's
list of most toxic cancer-linked chemicals. The worst part: We throw away 18
billion
of these a year, and it takes hundreds of years for them to decompose. That
means every disposable diaper made is still out there.
Cloth, laundering at home: A much better choice.
It takes less than 22 pounds of cotton for two years' worth of diapers. Washing
them at home takes 50-70 gallons of water per wash, or about the same as flushing
the toilet 5-6 times a day. A recent study found that even when you factor
in the growing of the cotton, making disposable diapers requires twice as much
water and three times as much energy.
Cloth, using a diaper service: The best choice.
All of the same benefits as laundering at home, without the rising and soaking!
Most importantly, our service uses less water than washing at home because
our industrial washers can clean more diapers with less water.
