At the
Boulder Community Foothills Hospital, sustainability coordinator Kai Abelkis estimates that, since a laundry service was contracted to
kept more than 22,500 diapers from the landfi ll each year.
able. “T at’s defi nitely the one weak spot in all of this,” says Bolus. “Because they are fl ushed or thrown away, it means you are not recapturing something that is petro- leum-based, so you have to go back to the oil well.” T ere is also concern that the gDiaper liner is not
safe for America’s sewers. When, in 2006, the City of Vancouver, Washington, conducted a small study of the impact of the diaper liners on Vancouver’s sewage and wastewater systems,48 city offi cials discovered several problems. T ey found, for instance, that aſt er the disposable pads became saturated with water, they swelled to the size of soccer balls, and that a sticky residue from the liners caused clog- ging that had to be manually cleared.49
tion in the Columbia River (where Vancouver’s treated wastewater is released), that until more research is done showing that the liners are safe, they should be bagged and disposed of in the garbage.50
wash their custom-made
cloth diapers, they’ve
Partly because
Environmental consciousness is a megatrend. All of society is getting more environmentally aware,
and parents are getting there even quicker.
KIM GRAHAM-NYE
of the criticism, gDiapers has started making a cloth option: a highly absorbent hemp-cotton insert that can be machine-washed and reused. Recently, when I took my baby to a baby yoga class, I met a mom there whose fi ve- month-old, Juniper, was in cloth gDiapers. It was the fi rst time I’d seen the system outside of cyberspace. T e cov- ers are adorable, and
COFOUNDER, gDIAPERS
the wide Velcro cleverly fastens in back. “When our (Note: T e clog-
ging was due to both the absorbent chemical gel and the liner’s cloth material.) City offi cials concluded that the liners (meaning both the outer cloth component and the inner chemical components of the diaper) had so much potential to get entangled in the pump system, as well as to cause potential health problems and pollu-
washing machine broke, I tried the disposable inserts to see what they were like,” Xandria T ompson, 20, told me. “T ey were defi nitely better than the Seventh Generation disposables, which gave my daughter a wicked rash, but they’re still disposable and not as good as cloth.”51
For T ompson, the gDiaper refi lls, while less
FOR MY MIDDLE CHILD
You are the sound of geese In spring Flying over the heads of my boy and me Hanging clean diapers on the clothesline, Tiny T-shirts, A triumphant fl ag to say, New Baby On His Way!
You are the sound of geese In spring Your cold unmittened hand Pointing—gasp—at the V in the sky Oh, you say, And I close my eyes To feel the new one quiver.
—JENNY DALEN
irritating to Juniper’s sensitive skin, don’t seem very eco-friendly. She doesn’t compost, and uses a septic tank for sewage, so she can neither compost nor fl ush the inserts. Even using the refi lls, T ompson found herself embarrassed by the amount of waste her family was generating—she shares cans with three other fami- lies, and the garbage is picked up only once every two weeks. Still, she’s glad to have the option, and doesn’t feel that this disposable system will take cloth users away from cloth diapers, as some critics fear: “I think they’re a nice alternative if I’m trying to travel, or if I were sick or something, but they’re defi nitely not pull- ing me away from cloth. In the end, I still feel like I’m wasting a brand-new product every time I use one.” Cotton Babies, one of the largest makers of cloth dia-
pers, employs 47 people in St. Louis, Missouri, and off ers consumers a hybrid system of reusable cloth inserts and disposable inserts: Flip disposable inserts, which come in packages of 18, are designed to be used inside cloth covers. Cotton Babies does not claim that Flip disposable inserts—made from SAP, wood pulp, nonwoven bamboo,
May–June 2010 |
mothering.com 65
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