To be honest here, if cloth and disposable diapers had equally-negative impacts on the environment, we'd probably go for the disposable. Just use it and toss it. So easy. But they aren't equal, and disposable diapers are bad, bad, bad. Even those "environmentally-friendly," chlorine- and gel-free ones end up in the junk after only a couple of hours of use.
For full disclosure purposes, we use disposable diapers when we travel and at bedtime. One of the medicines that TIC takes before bed makes him drink tons of water overnight and subsequently makes him soaked, soaked, soaked. Ours isn't a perfect system, but we end up with seven disposable diapers in the trash each week instead of 37. And every little bit helps.
Not everyone has a diaper service nearby, and so the only cloth option would be a do-it-yourself kind. I'm sure once you get into a system, it's not so bad, but I'm grateful that my service does all the dirty work for me. However, societal deterrents sure make it hard on parents to choose cloth. There are a dwindling number of diaper services, and many daycare centers and preschools prohibit cloth diapers. So, sometimes even the best intentions are trashed along with the disposables.
We too took the cloth route with our first child. Research I did seemed to point in the direction of break-even regarding impact of cloth vs. disposable. Sure disposables gather in landfills but you have to take into account creating cloth diapers, water used & energy used to clean cloth as well. I support diaper services but I'm not sure where the arrow falls on which is worse.
Posted by: james | Feb 9, 2006 12:00:58 PM