Washing Cloth Diapers-Is it really better for the environment?

Lots of people ask me how I wash the diapers.

"You must spend hours doing laundry," they say.

"How can you be saving the environment if you do that much more laundry?" they say.

"How do you deal with the POOP?" they say!

"I couldn't do cloth diapers because I couldn't handle the laundry, I am MUCH too busy!" they say.

Guess what?

I'm busy. I have a full time job, a baby, a husband, two dogs, a house to run, and a blog that will NOT write itself! So if I can do it, so can you!

So on this Earth Day weekend, here is a little tutorial on how to wash and deal with the diapers!

Now first of all, as I mentioned above, people always say that all that washing MUST not make disposables better for the environment.

That's simply not true. Because you see, disposables are not disposable. Once you use them and throw them away even if they are out of YOUR sight, that doesn't mean they are gone. Once those sposies are hauled away to a landfill they will sit there for at least 500 years.

As this blog says:

"In other words, if Christopher Columbus had worn Pampers, his poop would still be in some landfill today."

Perspective?

Yes'm.

Now onto producing disposables versus laundering cloth diapers. I am again going to quote this blog. Here's why washing cloth is STILL not even coming CLOSE to making the negative impact on our world that disposables are:
  
"Disposables Help Increase Gas Prices

We, as a nation, pay through the nose for disposable diapers throughout their life-cycle. In the full-cost accounting, from farm to factory to storefront, compared to cloth diapers, disposables:

• create 2.3 times more water waste,
• use 3.5 times more energy,
• use 8.3 times more non-renewable raw materials (like oil and minerals),
• use 90 times more renewable raw materials (like tree pulp and cotton),
• and use 4 to 30 times as much land for growing or mining raw materials.

Yikes!
Let’s break it down further…
A disposable diaper is practically dripping in oil. Oil is the raw material for the polyethylene plastic in disposables and it takes about 1 cup of crude oil just to make the plastic for 1 disposable diaper. Taking that a bit further, assuming you use at least 6,500 diapers, this means that it takes about 1,625 quarts of oil to diaper your baby for 30 months—not including the oil involved in the diapers’ manufacture and delivery.

Yes, that’s right: It takes more oil to keep your baby dry for 2-1/2 years than it does to lubricate all the cars you will ever own in your lifetime.

For the nation, this means that over 250,000 trees are destroyed and over 3.4 billion gallons of oil are used every single year to manufacture disposable diapers in the United States. For that amount of oil, we could have powered over 5,222,000 cars in the same time period.
The importance of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels through our diaper choices cannot be overestimated. Using up what little affordable oil we have left on this planet to improperly manage baby poop is possibly the stupidest use of oil we could think of, besides the disposable water bottle.
Such recklessly wasteful use of oil threatens not only our environmental security, but also our economic and homeland security, too. As we waste all the easy, cheap-to-produce oil we have left on unnecessary conveniences like disposable diapers and water bottles, we will increasingly have to rely on risky, costly-to-produce oil from deep in the ocean, the pristine Arctic, the Tarsands, and the Mideast and Venezuela, and suffer the price hikes, environmental disasters, and scary, scarcity politics that go with that. (War again, anyone?)
Would you go to war for the resources to continue to cover our children’s bottoms in sweaty, chemical-laden plastic? Oh yeah, we already did."

Try telling me NOW that washing cloth is worse/just as bad for the environment than disposables.

So with that being said, let me give you an easy peasy wash routine that doesn't take long, doesn't break the bank, and will let you do more important things with your little one than constantly run to the store to buy diapers!

 We keep our diapers in a pail in the nursery. The pail has a pail liner in it. Once we change a diaper we remove the insert and throw the whole thing into the pail along with the wipes. For diaper covers, we close the aplix tabs and put them in a wet bag that hangs from the changing table. You don't want to keep your covers in the pail because it will help wear them out faster, but all in ones and pockets can go right in the pail.

You are ready to wash (usually every 2-3 days) when the pail is full.





  

Step 1: Make sure all of your inserts have been removed and your aplix tabs are closed so as to avoid getting stuck on other diapers in the wash (Remember, it's easier to do this as you go!)


 

Step 2: Turn on your washing machine. Now each load gets a rinse cycle first in COLD water. On our machine I just turn the knob to the rinse cycle and put all the contents of the pail into the wash and let it rinse cold with NO detergent.
 
Think to self, "Yikes, my machine is dusty. I should probably do something about that, but the dust can wait. I have to finish these diapers so I can go snuggle my little one!"

So while the diapers are in the rinse cycle I go upstairs and do other stuff like hang out with my baby or clean, or watch TV (yea right!) But the point is, I can get stuff done, even though I have to wash diapers....SHOCKING I know! but it's true!!! :)


Step 3: About 20 minutes or so later (or the next day, because the wash can always wait! Your baby can't!) I run down and turn the washer to the HOT wash/COLD rinse setting and set the knob back to the full wash cycle. I add two tablespoons of Planet detergent. You can use a variety of different detergents, but we like Planet because it has NO dyes, NO brighteners, NO fragrance, NO bad stuff. So it's good for my little one's sensitive skin AND good for the environment! It's available locally at Feel Rite and the Lexingtion Co-Op. It's $13 or so for a 100 fl oz. To put that in perspective, we have bought a bottle of it TWICE since July. TWICE. So it lasts forever because you only use a small amount, and it is CHEAP! Can't say that about Tide! 

So once I change it to hot and add the detergent I am done for now! The diapers wash and I go about my life.

Step 4: The diapers are done and now they need to dry. I put all the inserts and wipes into the dryer and dry on medium heat with my wool dryer balls for about 20-30 minutes.  Any covers, wet bags, or pockets/all in ones get hung on the line to dry. My hubs hung a LONG laundry line in my basement for drying on the line in the winter, and in the summer I dry all the diapers on the line outside (sunning removes stains too!) which reduces energy use even further!

Step 5: The next morning take the diapers off the line and stuff them (if you use pockets) and put them away. You're done!  No running to the store, no spending money on new diapers once the diapers are dirtied, and only a few minutes every few days to do the laundry.

See? It's not bad at all!!! I probably spend one hour or less doing diaper laundry per week from start to finish. So it's not daunting, and the laundry is not a reason to decide NOT to do cloth diapers. Because it's not that big a deal!

Now I know you are wondering what happens when your baby turns 6 or so months old and starts solids? What happens when there is actual poop to deal with? Well that's just one extra step. 

All you do is get a diaper sprayer and hook it up to your toilet. This took my hubs about 15 minutes. When you change a poopy diaper you bring it to the bathroom and spray it clean. The diaper goes into the pail until wash day. Done.

Now you might be saying, "Gross, I don't want to spray the poop off my child's diapers." Well did you know:
 
  "...that human waste is not actually supposed to end up in landfills?  The directions of the backs of each package of disposable clearly states that users are to take the diaper to the toilet and rinse or shake the poop off before throwing the diaper into the garbage!

Here's exactly what this particular package says...

"Rinse or shake diaper contents into the toilet.  Wrap diaper securely inside it's back sheet before discarding into waste receptacle."

Now imagine, if families really followed the directions.  How many more disposable diaper users would be converted to cloth because they would no longer find disposables so much more convenient?"


Yep. That is what it says on most packages of disposables. Because your child's waste is NOT supposed to be in a landfill.

    
"Imagine a world where all disposable diapering families had to take each soiled diaper home in a baggie, take each disposable diaper to the toilet, and rinse or shake the poop off before disposing of the diaper?

Nevermind whether they all actually would do it, but do you think they'd think twice about the convenience of disposables compared to cloth diapers?  After all, part of what people think is so gross and inconvenient about cloth is having to deal with the poop, take the diaper to the toilet, etc."

Source: http://www.knickernappiesblog.com/2011/04/are-disposables-really-that-convenient.html
 

So on this Earth Day think twice about cloth diapers. It is not as hard as you think. And for every child that is cloth diapered that is thousands of diapers and fecal matter that is not in a landfill for our  children's generations to deal with.

Happy Earth Day!!!

Love and Laughs,

Danielle