The Sustainable Baby, Diapers
Filed Under: Baby, Susatainable Living on January 21, 2010
The single most expensive and resource-using aspect of baby rearing is diapering. Newborns can go through 10-12 diapers per day and toddlers can see three to five of them easily. The average baby in America uses 6,000 diapers or more before becoming potty trained. That is a lot of diapers.
That is, of course, assuming that they go with 89% of American babies and have parents who choose to diaper them with disposable, plastic diapers. You know, the ones that adorn the store shelves of every major shopping center. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this article now, but before you get all huffy about how expensive and difficult cloth diapering is, let me give you a few facts that involve not just the dollar figures and eco-friendliness factors, but also your baby’s health.
Severe Diaper Rash
The Journal of Pediatrics did a study in which they surveyed one-month old babies. 54% of those babies who were diapered with disposables had diaper rash during that first month and 16% of those had to go to the doctor and their diaper rash was classified as “severe.” Without disposables? Diaper rash incidents were only 7.1% of the same group and less than 1% of those had one that was “severe.”
Think about that for a minute.
What’s In Disposables
Now let’s look at what’s in disposable diapers from two of the major manufacturers whose names I’m sure you’d recognize. One comes in a red bag and the other in blue. These aren’t the “ingredients” list, mind you, these are the chemicals that are in the diapers themselves.
Sodium polyacrylate – this is the super-absorbent gel that is used to make the glorified toilet paper that makes up the bottom of the diapers soak up so much liquid. It’s used so that the diaper can be kept small so it doesn’t have to be so bulky. This stuff is a known toxin that is most often the culprit behind diaper rash. Read the label: it’s deadly to pets. Pets are people too – it’s more than just a saying. What’s deadly to them is probably deadly to your kids too.
Dyes and Fragrances – the chemicals used to make fragrances are some of the most complex chemicals in the health and beauty industries. They are also almost always the culprit when someone has an allergic reaction to something. Just the smells can sometimes cause headaches and dizziness. A lot of diapers use fragrances to mask other (natural) smells.
That’s just the beginning. Some diapers contain dioxins and can even be a choking or other hazard for small children. Most are not biodegradable.
The Diaper and Your Pocketbook
Now consider how much those diapers cost. In six months, a newborn will have gone through 10 diapers per day for 
the first month, decreasing to about 6 per day on average for the rest. So we have one month at 10/day or 300 diapers. After that, we have five months at 6/day or 900 diapers. So in the first six months, the average baby will go through about 1,200 diapers.
Packs of major brand diapers in disposables cost about $40 per 180 diapers. So those 1,200 diapers will cost you about $266 in total for that six months of diapering. Even going with one of the most expensive cloth diapering systems (and what I’ve been told is the best), FuzziBunz (Amazon link), at $18/each (everything included), for a dozen diapers or $216 per dozen. Ad to that the laundry cost of washing these diapers daily and it’s about even with the purchase of disposables.
Now consider this: for $266, you got six months worth of diapers and that’s it. Or you got diapers that you will be able to use for the entire time your child is in diapers. Take that $266 and times it by six (most children are potty trained by age 3). So your choice is to spend $266 right now or spend it every six months for almost three years, paying out about $1,500 in diapers by the time your child is potty trained.
Put in that perspective, buying less than $300 in cloth diapers doesn’t seem like such an expense. Does it?
Cloth Diapering’s Other Benefits
The other benefit that you probably drew as an inference here is the bonus that you get in your baby’s health. Cloth diapers are natural fiber (usually, read the label), are biodegradable should you ever thrown them away, and are softer, more comfortable, and better for your baby. No chemicals, no nasties (other than what you child puts in them, haha), and no landfills full of tons of toxic waste that doesn’t degrade.
Need more reasons? I don’t.
Images Courtesy of FuzziBunz.
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