Because we started on cloth for the money factor, I never knew the extent of how much we were also helping the environment until I started researching last year. With landfills overflowing and the price of oil through the roof – cloth diapering is an amazing eco-friendly alternative to disposables.

Disposable Facts:

• Disposable diapers are the 3rd largest single consumer in landfills and represent 30% of non-biodegradable waste
• It takes around 500 years for a disposable to biodegrade, however that number is only an estimate since they haven’t degraded yet
• Disposable diapers create 2 times the water waste, use 3 times the energy, 8 times the non-regenerable raw materials, 90 times the renewable raw materials and 4-30 times as much land for growing raw materials
• A babies diapering life will contribute 1 ton of garbage to the land fills.
• Disposable diapers need sunlight and air to decompose however landfills are designed to minimize both.

For more information on cloth and the environment please refer to these articles: The Diaper Drama, The RDA and Punkinbutt. They all do an amazing job breaking down the environmental benefits of cloth and I don’t feel like I can add any other eco-commentary.

All the facts are from the following resources: Sierra Club, Californians Against Waste, Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Agency, Lehrberguer Report on the Impact of Diapers on the Environment, Greenpeace, Environmental Defense Fund, Center for Policy Alternatives