A few weeks ago I posted a poll about diapers. I wanted to get a feel for what folks were doing when it came to diapers, whether people were going solely cloth, or disposable. There were some really good and helpful comments on the post about diapers and the pros and cons of both kinds, so be sure and check out the comments on the post.
Below the jump you’ll see the results (including the 5 “Other answers…” listed) and some thoughts.
Poll Results
Total Votes: 55
- A Combination of Disposable & Cloth: 24 votes (43.64%)
- Disposable: 15 votes (27.27%)
- Cloth: 11 votes (20%)
- Other answer: 5 votes (9.09%)
Here are the “Other answers”:
- Reading this is making me rethink cloth diapers, would love to know more
- diaper service
- Cloth at home and 7th Generation / Earth’s Best “on the Road”
- gDiapers! The hybrid diaper!
- www.gdiapers.com – can be composted
What does all of this mean?
Well – it’s clear that most people find that doing some kind of a hybrid-solution works best for them. By far the brand mentioned most was gDiapers – which itself IS a hybrid between cloth and disposable. It sounds like a lot of folks like to try to stick to cloth or some type of a hybrid diaper at home, but when they go out, it’s all about the disposable. And that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean – I want to do what I can to care for the environment and all – but I can’t imagine carrying around stinky poo from two babies while I’m running errands around town.
However, when people tried to make the “cloth-only” suggestion because of the environmental impact that goes into the making of disposable diapers, that didn’t really work. There were numerous people in the post (including others on Facebook when I was asking about this there) that pointed out that the environmental impact was about the same. Jennifer commented on the post and said:
“About 1 gallon of water is used in manufacturing each disposable diaper…and about a gallon of water is used to wash a diaper [link].”
I’m guessing we’ll go with the hybrid diaper or try and stick with cloth at home and disposables while traveling and away from home. But it was really helpful to hear people’s experiences in this post about diapers (I never thought I’d be excited about thanking people for sharing their diaper thoughts with me). Huh.
fyi, water use is not the only aspect of environmental impact. water is largely renewable. the landfill aspect of a disposable diaper is the kicker for environmental impact.
I agree with Peter–what gets me about disposables is how long they sit in the landfill! Gross. And I always just carried a plastic bag with me and threw dirty cloth diapers in there if I was out and about, unless I was going overnight somewhere. It worked fine, and I could just dump the diapers in the pail when I got home. Otherwise there’s not much time to use cloth, because you can always convince yourself that you’re going to have to go out soon, so you might as well put them in disposables.