Besides the two obvious reason, the environment and cost effectiveness, there many more reasons why you should cloth diapering your baby. But let’s start with these two obvious reason first.
Environment:
Many pro-sposies argue that the extra water that are used to laundry dirty cloth diapers are just as abusive to the environment as disposable diapers. Well, let me tell you that they are wrong. Why? Here’s my point (and is base by fact not opinions)
1) Did you know that there are “…2 billions tons of urine, feces, plastic and paper are added to landfills annually” and that “it takes around 80,000 pounds of plastic and over 200,000 trees a year to manufacture the disposable diapers for American babies alone?”
2) It will take at least 500 years for the disposable to completely decomposed, even the bio-degraded ones. For the bio-degraded diaper to decompose it has to be exposed to the air and sun. Now, it’s highly unlikely that that is possible at the landfill, isn’t it.
3) The untreated human wastes that are dumped in the landfills can contaminate the ground water as well.
4) To wash dirty cloth diapers we spray and flush solid down the toilette then wash it in the washing machine. Thus, the water is not contaminated as pro-sposies argue, since both the toilette and washing machine’s water go into the sewer systems.
Cost:
This is probably the most attractive reason why many mamas, including me, turned to cloth diapering.
True that you will have to pay more at first in order to build up your stash but it’s a one time cost that you invested in and that’s it (unless you become addict to getting fluffy mail like many cloth diaper mamas, but you still save a lot more money then disposables).
To roughly break it down, you will need to invest in cloth diaper around $1500. With this amount you can pretty much build a great luxury cloth diapers stash. So, it can cost you even less if you shop smart and go for high ends cloth diapers. Take me as an example, I spent $750 in cloth diapers and I got a great stash. I got 12BG, 9 FB OS, 6 FB Pocket, 36 prefolds, 6 Swaddlebees, 6 GM, 6 Organic cotton BG, 3 PP. And I do laundry every other day. I basically pay half price for all of these new cloth diapers because I wait for all sales and hunt for coupon. Now, for disposable you’ll probably pay around $2500 a year per child. So, you can save anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 the first year you use cloth diapers. And since you have to pay for disposable per year per child until the baby is potty train, and with CD you only pay once and that’s it, you’ll save even a lot more.
Now let’s look at other reasons to cloth diapering
Potty train
Your baby will be potty train faster then disposable babies because your baby can feel it when it’s wet or dirty. Hence, it increases the awareness of the baby earlier on and s/he knows then s/he gotta do the business.
Happier bunz
While occasionally your baby will get rash from cloth diapering, s/he will get way less rash then disposable babies. Hence your baby bunz is happier ;)
Cute bunz
OMG – have you seen a baby in cloth diaper? They have the cutest bunz ever! You baby bunz will be the most popular in the block and among the nurses and the doctors. Trust me!
That’s it for today!
Any question, concerns, complains, feedback, or whatever that’s on your mind, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you asap.
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I don't know... the amount we would have to spend in laundry (we use the laundry mat) and the possibility of my son's wonderful bowels leaking through... it just seems too risky!
ReplyDeleteYeah - the laundry mat may not be ideal for cloth diapering as you need to, ideally, do laundry every other day. So, it would be difficult to do with laundry mat.
ReplyDeleteBut the leaking bowels if you learn how to wrap the cloth diaper correctly, and make sure that there is no gap b/w cloth and the cover, and the size is right, then rarely the leaking would happen, unless you got a bad brand of cloth diaper ;)