Pink & Green Parenting: Saving Money and the Planet (Even If You Must Use Disposable Diapers)
First, a confession: I, your left-leaning, recycle-happy, Al Gore-loving, hemp bag-carrying Queercents mom, use disposable diapers. Though I am well aware of the hideous environmental impact of disposables, and I fear there’s a landfill somewhere with our daughter’s name on it, I really had no choice. No, really! Hear me out: we are living in a rural farmhouse that lacks the proper wiring for a washer/dryer. There is no diaper service available in our area. After some soul-searching, I came to the conclusion that hand-washing poopy dipes might be the urine-stained straw to break this particular mama camel’s back. (Okay, that’s one of my clunkier metaphors, but you get the [poopy] picture.)
The arguments for using cloth diapers are persuasive. They are far cheaper, less destructive to the environment, don’t expose your baby to numerous toxins, and so on. If you have a diaper service in your area and/or have easy access to a washer-dryer, then I do encourage you to at least try to go the plastic-free route.
It’s better: for the baby, and for the environment. And for your pocketbook, too.
However, some of us simply can’t’”or won’t’”use cloth. So what’s an environmentally conscious, money conscious, chemical conscious, you-name-it conscious queer parent to do? Well, here are some ways that I’ve found to save money and reduce the environmental impact of your little pooper’s waste products.
1) Use 7th Generation or other eco-friendly brand
We’ve found these to be almost as absorbent as the leading brand. Their main claim to eco fame is that they are chlorine-free, which, as their website will tell you, helps reduce the amount of dioxin pollution, which is a significant carcinogen. They’re also fragrance free and hypo-allergenic. We use these, and have had no diaper rash. They’re about two bucks ($40 versus $38) more per 160-pack than Pampers. Moltex and Earthpure are other ecofriendly brands, but are more expensive and less widely available. Some folks like Tushies, but we found them too bulky.
2) Go for the G-diapers
No, this has nothing to do with the g-spot; a gDiaper is basically a plastic panty with a flushable, plastic-free insert. A middle path between cloth and disposable, gDiapers are a bit less of a hassle than cloth. However, once your baby gets bigger (and has the bigger poops to show for it!), these can get messy and unmanageable. The other problem is the plumbing: if you, like us, have ancient, faulty pipes, you’re likely to end up with some plumbing drama. Here are what other folks have to say about the gDipes.
3) Try Earlier Toilet Training
It’s been well-documented that cloth-diapered babies generally are toilet trained a year earlier than disposable-diped tykes. In fact, according to a 1999 NY Times article, in 1957, before the advent of disposables, 92% of babies were toilet trained by 18 months,whereas today, the average is hovering around three years. The reason is simple: babies, just like you, me, and everyone else, don’t like the feeling of being soiled. Plastic dipes’ much-touted supersonic absorption means that babies don’t feel soiled, and don’t feel motivated to use the john.
I haven’t tested this approach yet (my daughter is only 9 months, so she’s off the hook for now), but some parents who use disposables are apparently trying to reduce the cost/environmental impact by encouraging earlier toilet training. I certainly don’t want to be one of those scary ‘˜50s control-freak parents who’s obsessed with every errant poop or pee. But the logic of reducing the waste, cost, and ick of it all by toilet training a bit earlier is seductive. friends of mine successfully got their daughter toilet trained at 18 months with little drama or fuss simply by substituting cloth diapers a few times a day. The soiled feeling got her motivated, and they were off all dipes in a few weeks. I’m going to give this a try, when we get to that point. We’ll see what my daughter has to say about it’¦
4) Kill Your Diaper Genie
The Diaper Genie has been widely advertised as the solution to the eternal stinky problem of dirty dipes piling up in your garbage can. It creates a plastic ‘˜sausage’, encasing the offending plastic item in a condom-like plastic wrap. Did you notice how many times I used the word ‘˜plastic’ in the last sentence? That’s the problem: the Diaper Genie compounds the problem by adding’¦more plastic to the already environmentally harmful dipe. And it’s expensive; not only do you have to buy the bucket, but you also need to buy those plastic sausagey things, over and over.
We found the good ‘˜ole trash can worked fine in the early days, back when our daughter’s dipes smelled something like Love’s Baby Soft Perfume and gave us ‘˜70s disco flashbacks. Now, things have gotten a bit stinkier, so we use a Diaper Champ, which puts a lid on it, as it were’”it’s basically a trashcan with an extra, flippable top, that adds a layer of protection between our noses and the offending items. So just say no to the Diaper Genie and his/her black plastic fantastic magic.
5) Overcompensate in other areas. Overcompensation, thy name is Fink. We have a long tradition of overcompensation in my midgety family; my father was a 5’8’ varsity basketball player, and I was a five-foot-nothing teen model. Now, I’m bringing my sordid history of overcompensation to the baby arena (ironically, my daughter is actually quite tall!) Since I can’t go cloth, I’ve tried to reduce, reuse, and recycle in the non- refuse related areas of our family’s life. I understand the inherent limitations of this; like other guilt-driven approaches such as carbon offsetting, it doesn’t change the fact of the original carbon sin. We are still creating waste through our use of disposable dipes, even if we reduce our waste elsewhere. But since we are going to use disposables for the time being, we can at least try to reduce our waste elsewhere. Hopefully, it does more than just make use feel better’¦
I’ll elaborate further in future Pink & Green columns, but here’s a short list of what we do to reduce our non-poop-related mess: we avoid buying new baby clothes, donate our daughter’s to friends with babies as well as the local women’s shelter; we make our own baby food, thus avoiding the waste of store-bought jars and cans.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Great Dipe Debate, and any other ways you can think of to reduce dipe waste (all puns intended).
Jennifer: Although I can’t relate to this article just yet… it’s food for thought and a fun read too with all the black plastic fantastic magic!
We used the diaper champ too, until the seal broke and it quit being anything more than an inconvenient and extra-stinky garbage can. Now we use a regular lidded trash can with a foot pedal to open it.
I’m of the “Lazy Parenting” school of cloth diapering
We use disposables too. And we try to overcompensate in other areas like you as well.
Nina, I can tell you’re meant to be a parent if you find even articles about *diapers* fun!
Liza, I’ve heard that other folks had problems with earlier models of the Diaper Champ, too. The 2007 vintage (which we have) supposedly fixed that seal problem, but time will tell. Thanks for the link; I’m hoping to dip a toe– er, tush–in the realm of cloth dipes when we move to our new house, which is equipped with all the mod cons.
DivaJean, overcompensation rules!!! Thanks for all the feedback, folks.
We also use disposables because well, I am just not up to cloth diapers. We don’t use the plastic diapers though, and we overcompensate with other little tricks that are good for the environment also. We are making our own Soda Pop, Laundry Detergent, and soon after the new year we will be brewing our own beer.
Homemade soda pop! Very cool. My dad used to make homemade beer–good stuff, and cheap!
I’ve heard of cloth diaper liners that are made of some kind of rice paper – these liners allow you to “peel away” the solid stuff so that you can flush it, and make life a little easier in the diaper washing arena.
I wonder if these could be used successfully in a disposible diaper, so that you end up putting less poop in the landfill.
Diapers themselves are harmful, sure we know that, but it is also harmful having human waster in the landfill, too. Perhaps flushing away more of the human waste is another way to offset the use of disposables.
I myself no longer have kids in diapers, with the exception of the occasional night time pull-up. Here’s a question: which uses more resources / is more harmful? One pull-up used a day (for that nighttime wetting) or one set of sheets and blankets that have to be washed each day because they were wet during the night?
Great article! As someone who has come along way towards being more respectful of our earth, I too, have struggled with the diaper issue.
To date, we have tried the gDiapers, but found that my very weak septic system with even weaker water pressure couldn’t flush down even the most dissolved diaper insert. (But I love the idea of them, seriously.) If you could commit to composting the pee diapers, it could really make it doable.
Our saving grace were the 7th Generation diapers. They make a mean pull-up, and once you get over the kids asking why their diapers look dirty (they’re brown like a paper bag), you’ll find they are just as absorbent as the premium competitors. Plus, I have found them to be just as cheap by snagging them from Amazon when they are 20% off and then using the Subscribe and Save feature to get an additional 15% off plus free shipping. Super affordable!
Thanks for the awesome discussion!
This is a great article. I too, try to be green. I always thought I would use cloth diapers. Correct that. I always KNEW I would use cloth diapers. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that as soon as you plan to do something and act holier-than-thou about that said planned act, you will not be able to follow through with that plan.
I had who I thought was the perfect mate and was pregnant. I was 32 and had been wanting to be a mom for a very long time. My mate became abusive and I had to flee to safety and to make a long, horrific story very short, I found myself to be a single mom. I was on bedrest from nearly miscarrying from the abuse. Needless to say, my economic situation was poor, at the time in my life that I most needed extra funds. When I looked into the initial start-up costs of cloth diapers and a diaper service (I did did not have access to a washer and dryer), I simply could not afford to be green. I had to go the “evil” plastic route.
While I still feel very guilty about using plastic diapers, I know that it saved my sanity as well. Sometimes, in certain circumstances, people might have to make choices that aren’t the greenest. To make up for it, I never use a car. I figure all of that walking and bus-taking has to make my carbon foot-print a bit smaller. I take my baby in his little carrier to volunteer for the local recycling agency. I recycle, recylcle, recycle and have been explaining to my baby what I’m doing when I do so since he was a baby. All of his thrift store clothing, we pass on to other domestic violence survivors’ children. It’s a way of life for him. We also have gone to farmer’s markets since the beginning, to not further add to the problem of pesticides and poisons being added to our earth. The result? I don’t know yet, but I like to hope that all of this effort will make a bigger difference on his long-term memory and future actions than some diaper wearing he won’t even remember when he gets older. I hope. And I will insist that if he makes a baby, he has to cloth it up.