Jun 26

Jun 26 Our Garbage-free Diaper Experiment

01: Researching

While pregnant with our little one, we knew we wanted to search for alternatives to the conventional, disposable plastic diaper but had no idea where to start. Or what was actually better for the environment.

Commercial single-use diapers take 500 years to breakdown in a landfill.

This means the diapers you wore as a baby are still in a landfill somewhere or floating in the ocean.

We started researching…YouTube videos, Google searches, emailing diaper companies, blogs, etc.

We had lots of questions! Were there disposable diaper brands that were ‘good’? Could we see through company ‘green washing’ (making misleading environmental claims to make products seem environmentally friendly)? Could we make cloth diapering convenient?

After lots of searching, we realized our motivations included more than just the trash we would send to the landfill.

This is what was important in our search for a solution:

Amount of waste
Cost
Diaper ingredients/materials for the health of baby’s skin

02: Our Criteria

What are alternatives to the conventional, disposable diaper?

Go diaperless (a big NO for us).
Find a ‘better’ disposable (Was this realistic? Could we find a better alternative? Would we be able to look past company greenwashing?)
Cloth diapers (Would they leak? Is this gross? What type should we use? Are they expensive?)

Going diaperless wasn’t something we wanted to try, so we researched ‘eco-friendly’ disposable diapers and cloth diapers.

Here is what we found in each of our criteria:

Amount of waste:

Babies use A LOT of diapers! On average, 10/day. That’s 300/month and 3,600/year. Wow!

If we use conventional, disposable diapers, they make their way to the landfill from our trash can or other places in our environment (oceans, forests, rivers). They will take ~500 years to break down.

A ‘better’ disposable:

If you’re searching for a more sustainable disposable brand, watch out for greenwashing. Greenwashing is how some companies market their products to make you think what they provide is better for the environment when in reality, it is far from that. They will use words like green, natural, sustainable, eco-friendly, pure etc.

For diapers specifically, when a company says it is compostable, that doesn’t mean you can compost in your backyard. You will need to send it to an industrial composting facility where they control the temperature, aeration, and microbes to break down the diaper.

In our research, we found the Dyper brand. They market their diapers as compostable but are NOT compostable in your backyard compost pile. They offer a REDYPER™ service with curbside pickup to a composting facility, currently offered in 21 cities. The cost is $20 for each pickup (depending on your city), plus the cost of DYPER compostable bags, which you can order from your account.

If you don’t live in one of these cities, like us, they partner with TerraCycle to offer a mail-away option. We thought this would be a fantastic option for us! You purchase the REDYPER Return Bundle with everything needed to return a month's worth of used diapers + the return label in the Shop for $149. (What?! Woah! Not a cost we could afford at this time.)

We wondered if these diapers don’t make it to a composting facility and go to the landfill, is this option ‘better’ than a plastic disposable? In this resource, we found that they would break down in 50 years vs. 500.

Conclusion: There are some brands that are compostable in an industrial facility, and Dyper brand is one of them. They offer a pickup service if you live in one of the cities where it is offered. If you don’t, you can mail them in for an extra $149/month. If you decide to send them to the landfill, they will break down in ~50 years vs. ~500 years.

Cloth diapers:

The idea with cloth diapers is to use the same diapers over and over again, avoiding single-use plastic from going into the environment. Purchase once, and use the same diapers from the newborn stage until toddler.

You avoid physical garbage, but does the extra washing use more resources? Cloth diapers may seem more wasteful since you have to run your washing machine more often. However, the electricity and water you’ll use is far less than companies use in the production of disposable diapers—so using cloth diapers always has less of an impact than single-use ones, even if they are compostable.

You can reduce your impact even more by hang-drying the diapers in the sun.

Cost:

If you break down the cost of conventional brands, for example, Pampers. A box of 92 from Walmart costs ~$29. That is ~$.32/diaper. (If you used 10 diapers per day = $96/month, $1,152/year)

A ‘better’ disposable:

Dyper brand from Walmart: $38 for a box of 92 = ~$.41 per diaper ($123/month, $1,476)

Cloth diapers:

Nora’s Nursery pocket diapers: ~$10 each (4 pack or 7 pack). If you purchased 24 (washing every 2 days) = ~$240.

Conclusion: a compostable diaper brand isn’t that much more than a conventional disposable brand. Cloth diapers are an investment initially, but you start to save money after only 2-3 months. If you reuse them for multiple kids, they will save you even more!