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http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/05/16/f-consumer-disposablediapers.html#socialcomments
I just came across this article...I thought it was very good and I'll bookmark it to recommend it to others considering cloth. I would reiterate to them that using unbleached diapers, environmentally friendlier detergents, using your diapers on subsequent children, sometimes washing in warm or cold water vs hot and line-drying should cut down fairly drastically on water and energy use. One another thing is that dispoable companies have big advertising budgets and subsequent environmental impact...free samples in the mail, coupons, flyers, etc. whereas most cloth diapers I have seen use the internet and word-of-mouth (in person and through online forums) to advertise.
Anything to add? I like to plant the seed of cloth diapering with my childless friends who are close to starting families, so I'm always looking for info. |
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I'm glad they point out some of the flaws of the BEA report. When it came out a friend of mine (who worked for the BEA) was livid. The newspapers had screaming headlines about it, but didn't discuess the actual assumptions (a real disservice, in my book). I read through the whole thing carefully, and I was astounded at what the assumptions were, because they weren't the practice of anyone I knew using cloth. It was things like every load at 90C, bleach-related nappy soak in the pail, flushing liners every change, etc.
The real advantage of home-laundered cloth is that you can control so many of the variables. A 60C (hot) wash is a huge reduction in both energy and water from their assumed 90C (my machine in the UK mixed in 7L cold water before releasing 90C wash water to the pipes). I also think that having more diapers, although a bigger environmental cost initially, cuts down on water and energy use big time. The BEA study was assuming something like 16 (or so?) nappies; by having a few more you can cut your wash cycles way down. The BEA study also did specifically state that while it did not include disposal effects in the environmental impact calculation for cloth, because used nappies tend to find new uses around the house, it was also not factoring in any reuse. By using cloth diapers on a second (or third or fourth) child, you cut out the whole production impact, which, when you read the breakdown, is a pretty big chunk.
By being conscious with our choices, there are so many ways we can make our choice of cloth diapering even more environmentally friendly (while disposable users really are just in the hands of the diaper companies . . .). |
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| I didn't read the whole thing, but do you know where they got their data about disposable diapers? I had heard of studies done in the past that relied solely on data provided by the disposable diaper manufacturers, who of course have an advantage in saying they use as little resources as possible... Not a reliable source of information. So I'd be curious to know where the data came from for this study! |
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I'm not sure where the data from the BEA study comes from.
I just remembered the article does have a pro-disposable quote from a rep from the Forest Industry...the forest industry has a stake in disposable diapers b/c it supplies pulp & paper. I thought that thejournaist could have pointed that out in the artcile. |
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I'd love to know who funded the BEA study personally. Far as I know there's never been a truly unbiased study properly comparing the environmental impact of all kinds of diapers. The studies are either funded by a disposable diaper company or a few by diaper service companies (or organizations representing them) and they always have serious flaws in their assumptions.
I find it funny how they state that they've done all these studies/work and their conclusion (or one of them) is that cloth diapers have an environmental impact. They say it like it's a big surprise or something. Anyone with a brain knows that whatever you do has an impact, all you can is minimize that impact. If they want to really get critical of diapering then they need to be encouraging people to go the Ellimination Communication route, neither cloth nor disposable can compare with that for eco-friendliness!
They also haven't considered things like the use of organic cotton or hemp instead of regular bleached cotton. I think the jury is still out on bamboo as far as environmental impact but it's got amazing potential. They also don't consider the fact that trees/forests occupy a much different place in the world's ecosystem. While trees are technically a renewable ressource, cotton and hemp are renewable on a much shorter time scale. Most people also don't know that tree plantations require a significant input of petro-chemicals in the form of fertilizers, pesticides etc... I wouldn't say they require as much as traditional cotton farming, but enough that it deserves mention. I'd be very skeptical if that's included in any studies. Not to mention that they just don't have the biodiversity that real forests do, nor are they as amazing carbon sinks as real forests are.
And I highly doubt that they took into account all the extra loads of clothing and sheets that disposable users inevitably do because of leaks and blow-outs.
There's also the issue that I've found that, for many people, cloth often ends up being a segway into other adopting other eco-friendly actions. Not exactly quantifiable but still...
Karen.
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