Reusable Diapers Claim Advantage in Great Diaper Debate

Who thought that having a baby would cast the planet’s future in question?  Who thought that choosing a diaper would cause sleepless nights and insurmountable anxiety for which biomedical researchers have yet to formulate medication?  Reusable versus disposable; disposable versus reusable.  Your college philosophy professor will certify this question as an authentic dilemma—an apparently impossible choice between perfectly contradictory alternatives.  Conscientious parents, who understand they now hold the  planet’s future in their hands, enjoy all kinds of options and have all kinds of principles by which to choose, but neither reusable diapers (aka “washable cloth”) nor disposables holds a clear advantage.

Convenience seems disposable diapers’ greatest advantage.  Elastic legs and waistbands eliminate concern for a proper fit; and disposable diapers now come in approximately a dozen different sizes, so that they always will fit as if you had them tailor-made for junior.  Those little tape things eliminate the fuss and bother of pins or snaps.  Most disposable diapers come with fragrance and odor protection built right in, so that, when junior takes care of his business, mom or dad quickly, deftly changes the nappy, tossing the old one into a Hefty bag and going on with regularly scheduled life already in progress.  Daycare providers typically insist on your providing disposable diapers for your child, because they do not want all the mess and fuss of reusables any more than you do.  Acquisition, however, subverts disposables’ advantage.  If you order diapers online, avoiding the wear and tear of the Big Box store, you can get free shipping.  If you acquiesce and go to the Big Box store, you use-up a lot of your valuable time—especially if junior tags along for the ride. 

Earth-friendliness seems reusable diapers’ distinct advantage.  And they have evolved quite a bit since you wore them.  Some come pre-folded for ease of application; many come with snaps or Velcro closures, eliminating the complications and hazards of pins.  Diaper designers have solved leakage problems with the same kind of elastic legs and waistbands you find in disposables.  Some diaper manufacturers have developed “layered diaper systems,” which have reusable outside covers and disposable, biodegradable liners.

Many choices and variations exist like G Diaper, and the new higher fashion alternatives.  

We have listed what we think are the best choices to your right.

Cutting the Environmental Impact of Reusable Diapers

Reliable studies have shown neither disposable diapers nor their reusable rivals have a clear-cut advantage by any measure of diaper value.  Many families choose reusables, mistakenly believing they represent the more earth-friendly selection.  If you consider the question strictly in terms of the carbon footprint from manufacturing and long-term landfill contamination, you may make the case for reusable’s competitive edge.  If, however, you look at diapers’ complete life cycles, you will discover that reusable diapers ultimately generate as many greenhouse gases and put as many contaminants into the ecosystem as their much-maligned plastic-and-paper rivals.

You do have some control over the environmental impact of your reusable diapers.  Maintaining your allegiance to Mother Earth and looking out for her health, you face at least two critical issues: (1) what about energy consumption; and (2) what about wastewater management?  For your baby’s first year, unless you make some strategic moves and investments right away, you will wash at least one full load of diapers every day.  If you have other children, you reasonably may expect to run two loads of laundry daily.  You are consuming a lot of electricity and a lot of water; you also are pumping many potentially hazardous effluents into the eco-system.  But these are the variables over which you have control.

Stock up, so that you may do fewer but much larger laundry loads.  If your child uses ten diapers each day, invest in thirty or forty, so that you may postpone laundry for a couple of days.  Invest in energy efficient appliances.  Because new appliances are at least twice, as efficient as models from even two or three years ago, your new washer and dryer will pay for themselves in about a year.  When you install your new washing machine, convert to a wastewater recovery system, sending wash and rinse water to your landscaping instead of into the sewer system.  When you have you new washing machine up and running, buy earth-friendly detergents that work in cold water.  Hot water wastes energy, and bleach pollutes.  Just as importantly, although you have a brand new dryer, nevertheless you should air-dry diapers whenever weather permits.  Not only do you save energy, you also fill the diapers with the clean scents of sunshine and flowers.

Did You Want to Reuse the Whole Diaper?

You cannot just blithely walk into the baby boutique, saying you want reusables and expect the sales associate to hand you exactly what you had in mind.  You should expect some serious cross-examination, because —the baby-wrappers formerly known as “cloth”—no longer come simply small, medium, large; single layer or extra absorbent.  You now have the opportunity to invest in a layered diaper system—either an all-cloth combination or a cloth-plastic hybrid.  Consequently, you should expect the question: Did you want to reuse the whole diaper or just the wrapper?

If you say you would like to reuse the whole diaper, you still cannot reduce the question simply to small, medium, or large.  Diapers have evolved; you might say that diaper designers have customized them, liberally borrowing the best features from disposables, making the Great Diaper Dilemma more difficult than ever before.  You may choose from a variety of different waistbands, and a variety of different closures.  You still may choose between one layer and two, but you have more options from which to select.  Naturally, you still may choose the traditional square design, but you also may select pre-folded and other more extravagant shapes and configurations.

If you say you are not sure how much of the diaper you want to reuse, you may inadvertently discover the best compromise or all-purpose diaper.  The “hybrid” two-layer system features a more-or-less traditional wrapper—in a variety of fashion colors and styles, of course.  And it features a biodegradable or compostable, obviously disposable liner.  The liners come either in an economy sized roll or the handy pop-up box.  Because the liners’ sizes correspond with the wrappers’ sizes, you should make sure you get the same size, and you have to make an educated guess about how long it will take your rapidly growing child to graduate into the next larger size.  Although liner-for-liner you pay more for the handy pop-up box, your child may outgrow petite size 5 before she uses-up the super economy roll of liners.  Then, they become just so much compost.