Diaper Service: Environmental Benefits
It Takes 20 Trees to Diaper One Baby in Disposables for 2 Years
A single mature tree transpiring at a rate of 100 gallons per day provides the cooling equivalent of nine room air conditioners operating for 12 hours each day. An acre of trees removes the ozone produced by 48 cars operating two hours a day. A dense strip of conifers a quarter-mile wide can remove 80 percent of the airborne particulate matter which passes through it.
Bottom Line: trees are important, let's not waste them on a product that's used for a couple of hours and then thrown away.
99% Less Garbage is Generated When Cotton is Used
Experts in solid waste management agree on the following hierarchy of methods to manage our garbage (the most desirable is listed first):(1) reducing waste at its source; (2) reusing products; (3) recycling; (4) composting; (5) waste-to-energy incineration; and (6) landfill. An alternative to single-use diapers that reduces the volume of garbage at its source is readily available in reusable cloth diapers.
Single-use diapers represent the 3rd largest consumer item (after newspapers and beverage and food containers) in the municipal solid waste stream. These diapers will require over 500 years to decompose. Cloth diapers normally don’t enter our landfills since, after they are retired from the diaper service, they are used as rags until they disintegrate.
Less Water and Energy are Used to Launder Cotton Diapers than to Manufacture Paper Ones
Two days’ worth of diapers for one baby can be laundered in water equivalent to one flush of the toilet. The Local Government Commission awarded Tiny Tots First Place for Innovation in Industry Water Conservation in California.
Click the image on the right for a graph displaying the differences.
