Non-DL Friend Says Disposables are Wasteful

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dl820

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One of my non-bedwetting, non-DL friends who knows I wear (and is okay with it for the most part) says I am being wasteful by using disposable diapers. Everything we do has an impact on the environment and resources, but all of the studies I have read claim there isn't much of a difference between cloth and disposables in terms of energy used between both. Most of the wood fibers used for the padding in disposables (even ones made in Europe) come from fast-growing pine tree varieties on tree farms in the southeastern USA that are planted, harvested, and re-planted specifically for diapers and other products.

Diapers are only a small percentage of waste in landfills, where most of our garbage in the USA and Canada ends up. If you live in one of the metro areas with a waste incinerator as Indianapolis has, your diapers might be burned along with other trash to produce steam and/or electricity. I know all of the residential garbage picked up by the City of Indianapolis and some of the suburbs goes to an incinerator and the steam is used to heat buildings in and near the downtown area: https://www.covanta.com/Our-Facilities/Covanta-Indianapolis

I try to use resources wisely and recycle what I can, but I don't see any need to stop using disposables since they are comfortable and work well for me.
 
Just think.....millions of years from now, people will be thanking you for putting thousands of used diapers into landfills when those have become vast petroleum deposits, now fueling their cars and heating their homes. Life goes on. (actually I'm big on conserving resources and not polluting, but waste does recycle itself over the millennia. We just need to do a better job of managing our wastes and resources.)
 
My girlfriend has also expressed those same concerns with my wearing of disposable diapers. I shared the same articles showing that carbon foot print of cloth va disposables is pretty similar, but alas she still feels like I am being wasteful.
 
I think for them to be wasteful for us, they'd have to be casual and unnecessary. I could live without them but they make my life substantially better. They're not a hobby or even a habit, they're a compulsive urge. I can pick where and when I go with it but the urge is always present.
 
For sure it’s wasteful on the environment as is feminine hygiene products but the world is a cleaner fresher place because of these things.

By any chance would your friend wash your cloth diapers for you?

I agree with Dogboy though we do need to do a better job of waste management and recycling altogether.
 
Honestly I would be more concerned about throwing away completely recyclable containers made out of metal or plastic that just get thrown away because there is no deposit; WAY BEFORE I WOULD BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE PLASTIC IN DIAPERS.

The renewable tree system for the wood fibers in Diapers makes sense and they probably have the plastic situation pretty well figured out too so that they don't use too much resources for that; being that even "cloth backed" diapers are usually still Plastic Backed with some sort of "Cloth Like Cover" over the main plastic part of the diaper.
 
I guess your friend is also critical about other bedwetters and incontinent people and parents out there who also use disposable, same as with caregivers too.
 
I think you have to look by State. California. What is the most wasted commodity? Water. So Disposable diapers would be best for my state. Cloth diapers and washing them every few days plus regular laundry wastewater. Plus detergents and such could be harmful to our lives.

Right now with Disposable diapers, I can toss it Use a washcloth and clean my diaper area and save Tons of water.
 
My gf and I are a do what you can type of couple, we recycle almost all our paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, metal. I’ve made the choice to burn wood for heat vs oil since it’s a renewable resource, and we’re thinking / saving to add solar PV to the houses roof. I think all of this cancels out my 2-4 diapers a day.
 
pampers4U said:
My gf and I are a do what you can type of couple, we recycle almost all our paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, metal. I’ve made the choice to burn wood for heat vs oil since it’s a renewable resource, and we’re thinking / saving to add solar PV to the houses roof. I think all of this cancels out my 2-4 diapers a day.

Oil's a renewable resource, it just takes longer to renew ;) Now something like nuclear power... THAT'S truly not renewable!

WASTE PRODUCTION FACTS. In the U.S., 4.39 pounds of trash per day and up to 56 tons of trash per year are created by the average person. Only about one-tenth of all solid garbage in the United States gets recycled.

That number is clearly not including ALL sources of your trash, including things like trash created by the restaurant you eat at, your workplace, trash produced manufacturing your car, etc. That number is many times larger. (15lbs?)

So a few diapers a day isn't that big of an addition. Considering how low a percentage of the population recycles, if YOU recycle, you're more than fully offsetting any diaper trash you make.

good reading: http://www.ecoclean.in/whatistheaveragewastegeneratedbyahumanbe
 
I'm under no illusions that disposables are particularly good for the environment. Systems like washing machines and the power grid continue to get more and more efficient whereas disposable diaper technology is as good as it is going to get. My partner and I reached an agreement where I mostly wear cloth diapers supplemented by the occasional disposable. Is it too controversial to say that I really like both?
 
Sure disposables are wastefull, but so is cloth. As the others have pointed out, they are equally not good for the environment. It's really surprising how many don't realise the water wasted on growing cotton. It also strips the land of nutrients really bad, which need to be strip mined elsewhere and trucked in. All that wastefulness adds to CO2 being added into the air. Versus disposables being made from oil extracted from the ground and ultimately being put back into the ground (since diapers are almost always disposed of properly and end up in the dump- right where you'd want them to be so as to re-sequester that CO2).

If you really feel bad about putting them in a dump, then by all means toss them into the ocean (just kidding, seriously don't do that). Actually, try offsetting your carbon footprint instead. Recycle more, buy a hybrid or electric car, add solar panels to your house, whatever. There are plenty of ways to offset the waste of disposables (and cloth for that matter).
 
Cloth diapers are very hard to clean and maintain for someone who cannot do laundry every other week and have to use laundromats. they are just like regular underwear / briefs that you go to the store and purchase in a pack where the socks are sold at and they need to be constantly washed each week. Cloth won't work for me, because I go through 8 - 9 changes a day to manage my incontinence condition. I get them through my insurance plan.
 
tronic1993 said:
Cloth diapers are very hard to clean and maintain for someone who cannot do laundry every other week and have to use laundromats. they are just like regular underwear / briefs that you go to the store and purchase in a pack where the socks are sold at and they need to be constantly washed each week. Cloth won't work for me, because I go through 8 - 9 changes a day to manage my incontinence condition. I get them through my insurance plan.

With cloth you can easily add more layers. Most people will wear enough so they only need to change 3 or 4 times a day (or maybe more if bowell incontinent).

It's probably worth tying to get better diapers too. Though I completely understand this isn't always possible with insurance companies. Still 8-9 changes per day is really excessive. I only change 2 times per day (likely at a much lower cost than what your insurance company is currently paying too).
 
This has been studied to death. It turns out to have no clear winner once you take into account the costs of producing and washing the cloth diapers and their related materials.
 
willnotwill said:
This has been studied to death. It turns out to have no clear winner once you take into account the costs of producing and washing the cloth diapers and their related materials.

it can certainly be quite shocking to see just what the total environmental impact of certain items are. It's easy to not notice all the "support costs" associated with production and eventual disposal. (or even during use)

Cloth diapers look natural and gentle until you start looking at things like how hard cotton plants are on soil, the need for fertilizers and pesticides, the petroleum products used in its agriculture, (and stepping back one pace, looking at the impact of say, the tractors) then the bleaches used for the cotton (and the production impact of said bleach) etc etc. It's usually a VERY deep rabbit hole to go down. I honestly have difficulty fathoming how they can get anywhere near complete coverage of all the important angles.

Modern manufacturing is just such a ridiculously complex process.

Oh, and just think of the laundering process on cloth... the water wasted, electricity used, soaps made and then introduced into the environment over and over.
 
Exactly! So that non-dl friend was absolutely correct. Disposables are wasteful. But so is cloth. And permanent use of folley catheters are not a good option that also do not fulfill our meantal need for duapers anyways, so it's not like we have much of an alternative. The best we can do is try and offset that wastefulness.
 
Disposables are actually more ecological friendly the absorbent material will be gone in a few years the plastic will turn back into oil ashes to ashes dust to dust.
Making the washable diapers to washing and drying them and the plastic diaper cover had to be made and the pins for the diapers so in both the short term and the long term Disposables win hands down. So to tree huggers sorry charlie its a done deal.
 
People never actually look in to statistics. They usually go by what a so called "green way of life" organization says, because those websites try to make anything look bad without following up on their choices.

It's not just the energy/water consumption cleaning cloth diapers. It's the way the raw materials are made, specifically cotton. The amount of water cotton plants consume and the amount pesticides are one of the latest factors of why there's a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Cotton is the largest water consuming crop.

As a truck driver, I've actually been to many diaper plants. In Kimberly Clark's case, they make different materials in different plants, then they send them to the manufacturing plants across the country. They waste very little resources for the perhaps millions of diapers per day that they manufacture. They use renewable energy to power their plants as well.

The only thing you'd probably waste would be money.

I actually enjoy both cloth and disposable diapers. In my profession it's very difficult to use cloth. It wouldn't make much sense to use cloth diapers. Cloth diapers for adults is way behind baby cloth diapers, and until I recently discovered Ecoables but they could still use some improvements, Prefolds were the only legitimate product available. People today don't have the time or the expertise with them or just plain don't want to deal with it. Most modern adult cloth diapers are a joke. They don't hold as much as a disposable baby diaper does. Most of them are just poorly made.

Before I ramble on too much, you really shouldn't feel bad, there's things out there that make disposable diapers look clean out there. The worst environmental impact is usually from cows. Their farts and manure contribute the most towards "greenhouse gases". Changing over to cloth diapers would probably only save you money and won't actually do much change as far as the environmental impact is concerned, so wear what you want to wear and know that there really isn't a better choice.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 
xpluswearer said:
Disposables are actually more ecological friendly the absorbent material will be gone in a few years the plastic will turn back into oil ashes to ashes dust to dust.
Making the washable diapers to washing and drying them and the plastic diaper cover had to be made and the pins for the diapers so in both the short term and the long term Disposables win hands down. So to tree huggers sorry charlie its a done deal.

Truthfully this is how I understand it as well. Hence why I keep telling everyone you WANT to throw out disposables in the trash. Its oil from the ground, and eventually ends up as oil in the ground. Right where it should be.
 
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