Cloth Diaper Choices

The No Impact Man Talks Cloth Diapers

By Heather L. Sanders ⋅ October 6, 2009 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

This past month, the No Impact Man film was released in theaters. The film is a year-in-the-life documentary of Colin Beavan and his family as they try to live a zero-waste lifestyle in New York City. No small feat, eh?

Since the release of the film, there have been a number of interviews; I just happened to catch the NPR podcast interview with Colin, his wife and daughter. One of the callers brought up the subject of cloth diapers and my head nearly nodded-off my head as I vigorously affirmed Colin’s reply.

The caller’s name was Mary and here is the transcript of the discussion:

MARY (Caller): “Hi. I have a question about the purpose or the environmental impact that you are seeking when using the choice of not using toilet paper. I recently had a baby and in doing some research on disposable diapers versus cloth diapers, I found that it could be more of an impact on the environment to use a cloth diaper because of the amount of water and then place it and cleaning them and, you know, introduce detergents. So what was your environmental goal?”

And if you think about it, plastic diapers make up just the largest single item that goes into the landfills every day here in the United States. So we -without looking at the industry-funded studies, we just realized that the best thing environmentally for us to do is to use cloth diapers. But more importantly, my little girl who is old enough at that stage was able to tell me that she was much more comfortable in them.”

Whoohoooo!!!

Thank you Colin for pointing out several of the ideas promoted by advocates of cloth diapers.

First, don’t just grab hold of any research tossed out for public consumption and run with it - find out who funded it.

If the manufacturer of the Wii released research pointing to heightened intelligence in children who use the Wii 4-6 hours a day wise parents would question the validity of the findings. Right? And yet, caregivers will read a press release on how GREEN disposable diapers are in “this” or “that” area of the nation and embrace it as truth. It seems more likely this research feeds an internal desire to NOT cloth diaper rather than a burning conviction to make the most GREEN decisions.

Next, if you haven’t already - GO TO A LANDFILL. I did this with my children for a homeschooling field trip - I kid you now. Want to know what you’ll see?

Disposable Diapers…tons and tons of diapers. Diapers sealed away for eternity for future generations to dig up.

And finally, the comfort issue…can we truly deny the comfort of today’s cloth diapers to plastic diapers? Even if it is the eco-friendliest paper pulp around…it is still paper and plastic. I don’t personally want paper and plastic taped to me all day; few environmental arguments can stand up to the comfort of our children.

Later in the interview Colin talked about the essence of waste reduction:

Mr. BEAVAN: “And the thing about it is what we were trying to do with the experiment was to go - to cut down on all resources because there are so many resources that we, as Americans, use that are just plain waste. Because they’re wasted because they don’t even contribute to our quality of life.”

Exactly. If we sincerely want to cut down on consumption and waste, the only “true way” to tackle that desire is to focus on re-using; cloth diapers are reusable; disposable diapers are not. Cloth diapers contribute to our children’s quality of life both in the short term (comfort) and the long-term (less trees cut down and less oil used to produce and distribute them).

It is a great interview.
[Read or Read or listen to it]

Tags: advocates of cloth diapers, cloth diaper versus plastic diaper debate, cloth diapers, Colin Beavan, disposable diapers, disposable diapers versus cloth diapers, environmental goal, GREEN disposable diapers, landfills, No Impact Man, not using toilet paper, NPR, plastic diapers

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