[tetromino_]

> But cloth diapers are obviously much better for the environment

It's obvious only if you save and reuse the same set of cloth diapers for 2 or more babies. (Which places some constrains on brand, durability etc.) If you have only one kid, I am not sure which side is environmentally more friendly; growing and processing all that cotton (not to mention the plastic for all the waterproof covers) uses a lot of water and energy...

[phatfish]

I assumed the environmental angle was the reduction in waste going to landfill with all the extra plastic generated, by the diaper and the small bags that are usually used to reduce smell and keep things clean during changing.

The energy saving would not be as clear to me, but i wouldn't be surprised if reusable were a better choice there as well, just not as clear cut.

The amount of waste generated by disposable diapers was a concern, and we tried reusable ones. But they leaked often, the absorption material in disposable ones is way better than the cotton pads you get with reusable ones.

I would be happy with a middle ground. Reusable outer "pants" and a disposable insert designed well to work with the reusable part, as plastic free as possible.

[sfpotter]

The energy saving is clear and gets better year after year as the grid continues to green. You can also line dry cloth diapers which saves a lot of energy.

I never had any trouble with cloth diapers. You can always have a blow out with any diaper, but I didn't have any issues beyond that. Of course, there's some technique, but it's easy enough to find a YouTube tutorial if you need it. Snappies and decent covers help.

[sfpotter]

We kept the diapers from our diaper service and the covers. The washing machines used by the service are much beefier and can handle these kind of loads easily, and will generally be more water efficient.

We also got a good number of used diapers on Offer Up.

When we're done with our diapers, we will rehome them instead of throwing them out.

How does this change your calculations?

[sfpotter]

Oops, talked to my wife and realized I got a detail wrong: we did not keep the diapers from the service, we gave them back. And the diapers we got from the service were almost surely used by plenty of other people before.

Someone else on here seemed confused about the logistics off the service. We lived in Brooklyn at the time. A big truck would drive around our neighborhood and pick up and drop off diapers from many people throughout the neighborhood at once. More amortization at work.

Also, one more thing: we're big on line drying. We will primarily line dry these diapers instead of drying them in a machine.

Oh, and one MORE thing: we got our current washer and dryer free from a friend who was about to throw them out when replacing them.

There are so many ways to mitigate and reduce environmental impact beyond the simple-minded apples-to-apples comparison many in this thread seem to be doing.

[blks]

Sorry, does the truck picks up dirty diapers? Or what’s the point of the pickup? How do you package them for pick up?

[sfpotter]

The truck would come by once a week to pick up all of our dirty diapers and drop off a new set of clean diapers. The service provided a bucket with a cloth bag inside of it that had enough capacity for one kid for a week. Packaging up = closing the lid of the bucket and leaving it outside the door of our apartment. They would drop off a new one of these buckets full of clean diapers each week (visiting many other people at the same time). Beyond all the environmental benefits, living in the city this was actually super convenient.

[_DeadFred_]

Do you wear clothes from the store without washing them? Imagine a product straight from a plastics factory constantly on your baby's skin, designed with chemicals to make them as convenient/effective/cheap as possible versus safe/minimal chemical exposure, covered in plastics dust from the process/other products being made in the factory from worse chemicals.

We used glass bottles and a diaper service (we're from Santa Cruz) and people made fun. Then right after there were questions about chemicals from plastic bottles and our friends understood.

A quick search to see if there are also concerns about diapers returns https://www.ehn.org/non-toxic-diapers

A service is super easy. You can still use disposable for edge cases if needed. Why risk wrapping your child in highest profit possible+maximum convenience chemical creations 24/7 for years? Convience+chemicals+corporate profit greed have proven to be the worst combination for healthy/safe products in our capitalist system.

[kqr]

> only if you save and reuse the same set of cloth diapers for 2 or more babies.

... or buy and sell second hand. Reusable nappies treated well retain surprising value.

[sfpotter]

They really do! Anyone who's thinking that a set of cloth diapers begins and ends with a single family has really got a pretty limited imagination.

[ms_menardi]

Water is free, it comes from the sky.

energy is free, it comes from the sun.

cotton is free, it grows from the ground.

plastic is not free, there will never be more of it. I think that resolves the equation.

(this is an oversimplification obviously but I wanted to reframe it from "how much of our current resources does this action use" to "how much of our TOTAL resources does this action use")

[m4rtink]

Plastic is just hydrocarbos basically - hydrogen and carbon. You can totally synthetise it. Might just not be as cheap an convenient like making it from mined oil, at least initially.

[em-bee]

water is not entirely free. it has to be cleaned, which costs energy. energy is free, but access is still limited. likewise cotton also requires effort to produce.

i agree with your overall point though.

[nephihaha]

It depends where you are. The main problems are that a) we keep polluting water and b) most of the water is salty.

[em-bee]

exactly, i mean water after use. using water to create or clean diapers pollutes it, and because overall we use and pollute water faster than nature recycles it through rain we have to add our own cleaning mechanisms to keep up. that's fine, but it makes the water not totally free.