Diapers
By Chris Tilley
Composting gDiaper insert vs disposable
I have a 3 month old who goes through diapers at an alarming rate. We looked into environmental options before he was born and ended up choosing gDiapers. Our decision was based on a number of factors talked about below and what is available locally. We are some what rural and that effected our decision. I thought it would be good to go through some of the options out there and their benefits.
First up we have to talk about the typical disposable diapers. In Canada there are 4 million disposed of each day and 50 million in USA.(source,source) To put that in context in the US that is 3.17 million tonnes or 1.5% of the waste stream every year.(source) These diapers have plastic outer skins that make them difficult to degrade taking about 500 years.(source) As we know from the article on plastic bags, plastic doesn’t really go away, It just becomes these smaller and smaller microscopic pieces.
Cloth diapers have undergone many changes in recent years. The biggest is making them much easier to use. Gone are the pins, replaced with Velcro or snaps. They are fitted eliminating the need to take an origami course in diaper folding. One the environmental side, bleach is now frowned upon in washing them. Its not good for the diapers, its not good for a babies behind and its not good for the environment. Some place now have cloth diapers made out of bamboo. Bamboo is more absorbent than cotton and is environmentally sustainable.
Gdiapers have a cloth outer diaper that a waterproof, breathable polyester liner snaps into. Both of these are reusable with washing. Into the plastic liner goes an absorbent pad that is filled with farmed tree fluff. This part is flushable or compostable. They are fitted and use velcro making them very easy to use. The are gold certified Cradle to Cradle meaning that they have passed rigorous criteria in the materials used and the design of the product.
As far as what is best for baby the first thing to think about is a baby born today will likely still be alive in 2090. That means that they will be living with the choices we make today and the effects of global warming will be known then. Babies also potty train faster with cloth or gdiapers as they can actually feel that they are wet.
There are lots of options out there, so ask lots of questions. So what are some questions to ask? What is it made out of? Will it compost? Is it reusable? Will it contaminate the Earth? If it is reusable how do you clean it? How easy is it to use? What is best for baby?
Believe it or not, even conventional disposable diapers are recyclable. A pilot scheme called KnoWaste (or KnowWaste?) ran in the 1980s in Toronto. I know because at that time I had been using a cloth diaper service for my baby, and then found out I could pay $4 per week to have my disposable diapers picked up and recycled. It was a no brainer.
Recycle diapers? Yes, that’s right. They would wash them and then break them down into their component parts, and reuse the components.
Unfortunately, the program didn’t seem to go beyond the pilot stage, at least in Canada. Why? I’m not sure, (and I’ll look into it!) but I’ll bet it has a lot to do with the fact that we don’t pay the true cost of solid waste, so it’s cheaper to throw them away than it is to recycle them. Knowaste still exists, but they seem to have shifted their operations to the UK. http://www.knowaste.com/ca/latest_news.php
As concerned citizens we need to start putting the responsibility back on the producers of this waste. They need to be forced to take cradle to cradle responsibility for the products they produce, and relieve our over-burdened municipal solid waste collection system of this ever-increasing cost, which comes back to us as taxpayers. This system is coming down the pipe with EPR – Extended Producer Responsibility. And diapers are an obvious addition to this, especially since the technology to recycle them already exists.
As for Gdiapers, I’m not convinced. A disposable insert inside a reusable cover is at least partly good, but many municipal composting systems don’t take anything that’s contaminated with human waste, and I certainly wouldn’t want poopy farmed tree fluff in my backyard composter – I put the stuff on my vegetables!
Comment by Lesley Evans Ogden — Thursday, April 30, 2009 @ 12:46 am
Cool! I love hearing about companies that take others waste in turn it into something useful. And you are right about not composting the poopy ones. The gDiapers site say to flush those. We are doing the really early potty training with some success (really to early to tell) to minimize the poopy ones.
Comment by Chris Tilley — Sunday, May 3, 2009 @ 9:46 pm