Disposing of disposable diapers

I live in a rural area and have a local company that picks up my trash once a week. I've been concerned with the extra weight of all my diapers. I wear one a night, so 7 then wear several days during the week. The premium night time get real heavy as I drink and pee a lot. I just put them in a trash bag but it is too heavy for one bag. I mean 7-12 diapers and the premium night time have to be 5-6 lbs each so over 35 lbs. I end up splitting them up into different bags.

Recently I decided to give something a try. I sometimes add a booster to add bulk and prevent leaking. I remember someone mentioning using a terry towel inside, so I decided to give it a try. I figured it would take some of the weight off and I could just rinse it out in the morning.

Been trying it for a few days now and love it. Adds the extra bulk, that I and most others love. Not sure if I'm eliminating much of the weight but every little bit helps.

Why are you worried about weight at all?..

while I think 5-6 lbs per diaper is probably a bit high, yes, wet diapers DO add up pretty fast in the trash can. I took out two full kitchen bags last week and each of them were pretty heavy, mostly due to wet diapers. (20+ lbs ea?) So those two in my little rolling trash can were quite noticeable when I went to wheel it out to the curb on takeout night. That ends up coming down to (A) how much I drink before bed, and (B) how many of my daytime diapers get wet. I rarely wet during the day (though last week was something of an exception) but I almost always wake up with my premium diaper soaked by morning.

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Elenwen said:

Why are you worried about weight at all?..

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When your neighbor notices you haven't taken your can out for the morning and generously comes over to wheel it out for you...

next afternoon: "I saw your can wasn't out so I wheeled it out last night... what were you throwing away? Bricks?" :sweatdrop:

(true story)

Most of my overnight diapers are between 1.6-1.8 lbs, 2.0-2.2 on an exceptional day (Crinkles and similar). But as others have said, why would you care?

bambinod said:

When your neighbor notices you haven't taken your can out for the morning and generously comes over to wheel it out for you...

next afternoon: "I saw your can wasn't out so I wheeled it out last night... what were you throwing away? Bricks?" :sweatdrop:

(true story)

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"Ain't none of yeh business" is what I'll tell him. =)
No, seriously, if you are that worried, just take care not to forget about the trash can...

Diaper tourism. If weight is an issue, distribute them. For example, parks can have trashcans. You can always dump them in other locations, however: not in nature.


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I would not really worry about it. If someone want to go dumpster diving thru my trash and they find a wet diaper then I guess the joke is on them.

Not an issue for me, CP and Autism Senior Citizen.
My dydee pail is in my handicapped-adapted bathroom.
When full, I empty it into a kitchen trash bag, and I just go outside and across the lane to the communal dumpster here in the trailer park I live in here in Derry, NH and throw the bag of dirty dydees in.
Very early every Friday morning, the dumpster fork-lift garbage truck shows up and empties the dumpster contents into the hopper in the back of the truck.
Bye-Bye Dydees!

I change routinely 5 X's a day , that's not counting any fecal accidents or drinking more than I normally do ,on the last change my overnight diaper is a triple boosted cloth ,i am sure my garbage man appreciates that i use mostly cloth ,in my early days with cheap insurance diapers it was probably 8-10 per day, there's a guy around the corner from me with CP who has round the clock care ,he can drive his chair independently everything think else is done by caregivers ,he wears first quality diapers (trust me there is nothing worse than first quality diapers) garbage guys have real clear plan for most of the diaper wears cans , they don't lift them they let the truck do it.

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To clarify things. My rural trash pickup is just a couple of guys in a truck with a large box bed with fairly high sides. One guy has to grab each trash bag out of my barrel and throw them up and over the sides. All my diapers in one bag tend to be extremely heavy and would be a real chore to throw up and over the side of the truck.

I don't have a small digital scale so here is how I came up with my guesstimation. Most premium diapers are rated at 4000ml or more. Most tests and reviews put the number around 2000ml before leaking. I know I don't 'fill' them up to 4000 but I'm sure some get to 2000 or somewhere close. Some being fuller and heavier than others. So...2000ml equals a little over half a gallon. A gallon weighs a little over 8 lbs. That means that my full ones are at least 4 lbs. So 5-6 might be a tad optimistic.

Bottom line is, I don't really care how much the trash weighs, they will have to deal with it. 2nd. I really like adding the terry towels for the extra bulk, and might be saving a few ounces here and there...hehe.

Thanks for all the input and suggestions.

I live in a semi rural location as well, and have the garbage man that rides the back of the truck, they still life the can into the hopper to dump it, what I do is have two cans and try to level the weight so they both equally weigh the same. Generally I fill 2 half 30gal bags a week with used diapers.
My biggest feel is the bear coming buy and having a snack with the rest of my garbage, but ripping open the bags and spreading it on the front lawn (it happens a lot here)

sotexasDL said:

To clarify things. My rural trash pickup is just a couple of guys in a truck with a large box bed with fairly high sides. One guy has to grab each trash bag out of my barrel and throw them up and over the sides. All my diapers in one bag tend to be extremely heavy and would be a real chore to throw up and over the side of the truck.

I don't have a small digital scale so here is how I came up with my guesstimation. Most premium diapers are rated at 4000ml or more. Most tests and reviews put the number around 2000ml before leaking. I know I don't 'fill' them up to 4000 but I'm sure some get to 2000 or somewhere close. Some being fuller and heavier than others. So...2000ml equals a little over half a gallon. A gallon weighs a little over 8 lbs. That means that my full ones are at least 4 lbs. So 5-6 might be a tad optimistic.

Bottom line is, I don't really care how much the trash weighs, they will have to deal with it. 2nd. I really like adding the terry towels for the extra bulk, and might be saving a few ounces here and there...hehe.

Thanks for all the input and suggestions.

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My father used to work garbage collection, I can say from what he's told me that both city and rural guys appreciate the garbage being light, if you're the kind of person who has heavy trash, one of the things that some people did would be to split the weight across multiple smaller bags (I.e. use smaller trash bags or don't load up your normal ones as much) That way its lighter, though some guys can hate that because it means more bags to throw.

Another thing you can do is try to catch them and ask if it's too heavy and if there's anything you can do to help them, if they prefer it the way you do it or if they'd rather more bags with less weight. A lot of people who do collection are actually nice people but they get treated like shit by most people because well, they pick up garbage. If you're nice to the garbage people they'll generally treat you better, also, Tips in the winter (Or your local equivalent horribad weather season). I can't remember how many times when I was younger and we were struggling that I got Christmas presents because someone left tips for my dad and his helper and that made us actually have the available money to get presents.

But yeah, bottom line: If you take care of the garbage guys they'll take care of you 9 times out of 10. Also, offering cool water if its especially hot if you have waterbottles or anything is also something they appreciate. Weight is only an issue if you're the kind of person who like, treats them like shit, and I mean like in the sense of "purposefully making their life harder because you disapprove of their career choices" kind of treat them like shit. Otherwise as long as you can lift it yourself, chances are they don't have that much of a problem with it. Most people who pick up trash are actually buff as hell because they have to lift shit every day, a loaded diaper bag probably is one of the less heavy things they do. But like I said you might ask them if you're concerned or you see them struggling if there's anything you can do differently that might help in terms of how you bag up your trash.

I’ve tossed some heavy worn in the tub diapers away. Heavy!!!! I’ve gotten to the point to where if the trash man notices I don’t care. I doubt they really care either. They just want to get it dumped and move along.

We used to be friends with our trash guys when I was a kid. XD It was back before there were regulations about letting a bunch of kids hitch-hike on the back of your truck up the block. We'd help them throw our trash in and my brothers would hang onto the truck to get a free ride to our friends' house down the street. :laugh: Mom said I was too little to ride the back. (I was very disappointed, so the guys showed me how the giant 'scooper' worked in the back. That it doesn't just smush it, it pushes it up over a wall and into the truck. That was very impressive to me. XD)

We had to clear out a bunch of bad freezer-burnt food and my dumb brother stuck it in one can. And then was like "They didn't take it!" And I was like "I wouldn't either! It's way too heavy. You're gonna have to split that crap up like mom told you to do."

So the next week my mom and I made certain it was distributed so that none of the cans was actually too heavy for us to lift up. And guess what? It was gone. (Although extra smelly for having sat out another week in the heat. Sorry sanitation workers, my brother cannot follow directions. He has the dumb. D: )

Where I live, we have big wheelie bins, the garbage-men just roll them over to the truck which has a forklift type thing at the back to lift and tip two bins at a time, so they don't actually have to take the bags out or lift the bins themselves at all. A seven-stone girl could do the garbage run round here no problem, as long as she could walk the miles.

But yeah, my wheelie bin is pretty heavy; most weeks the contents are 75% wet diapers and 25% everything else.

It varies with municipalities, but when in doubt- ask them. Where I live (suburbs), there is an official 50 pound weight limit for each bag of trash. If it weighs more than 50lbs, my garbage men have the right to not pick up my trash by putting a note on my door saying it is too heavy and needs to be broken up.

The others are right though, it IS better to be nice. While those guys are used to heavy lifting, lifting up even 35 lbs over a high side rail, over and over again, would be a pain in the butt. Not to mention the bags will be more likely to break open while they are being swung up over.

One good way to make sure you don't over fill each bag is to put some styrofoam (or layers of cardboard/wood/whatever) at the bottom of the can then put in the trash bag. This will prevent you from filling it up with too many diapers every time.