This is a question for those of us who wear for fun instead of need.
Do you ever get that feeling of "Wow what am I doing to the enviroment" when you throw out a diaper? I sometimes stop and think and there would be less diapers in the land fill if I didn't wear for fun. Its kind of a sad thought. I'm curious if other people have it.
Yes.
I bought a cloth diaper so that I don't use up so many. Problem mostly fixed, except for when I use other people's stashes.
As for the "oh noes but cloth uses up water" eh....yessss....but so did making that disposable diaper. And it also used up oil to make it. And more oil to ship it. Then you used up oil in the plastic bag you used to seal it up so it wouldn't stink your garbage. And then your garbage was either collected or driven by you to a dump, more oil. And then it was thrown in a landfill, where in all likelyhood, it will last longer than any modern religion has (we're talking a good hundreds of years for it to break down in the open environment, the current best estimate for how long it will take in a landfill is...never). So comparing the amount of pollution, oil used, and energy wasted for one disposable vs timing your wearing right and throwing in a cloth diaper with your cold wash and some soap...no contest, sorry. And depending on your lifestyle choices with laundry and how you get your home's power...well, the overall affect will be:
Cloth: onetime use of energy and water to make it, oil to ship it to you. Regular use of energy and water to wash it. Lasts several years, biodegrades eventually if made from natural fibers.
Disposable: Energy and water to make it, oil to ship it, oil to seal it, oil to trash it, lasts forever, one time use.
Pretty cut and dry to me, you're not going to use up nearly as much energy just by washing something hundreds of times before throwing it away as you would by constantly making something new and then instantly throwing it out. As for if you use energy with warm water to wash....uh, yeah. I don't worry about that problem. I worry about my water storage tank bursting from steam in the summer when my water comes close to BOILING, thanks to having a solar thermal setup. It's currently holding 360 gallons of water it heated up to 160 degrees F today, and it didn't get any warmer than 42F outside. Go on, whine some more about how useless it is to do some small action that's better for the environment, because it still uses up energy. It's not like doing many small actions that were bad for the environment had no effect on the environment at all, right?
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceans-series,0,7842752.special
Go read that, especially the part on plastic. Then come back and spout out how since you do things like drive a car, changing something more minor than the car is pointless. Fuckers.