Why Should I Use Eco Friendly Diapers?

Every mother to be or new mom will be well aware of the need for nappies for their little one. Nappies, or diapers as they are more commonly known in the United States, are one of the biggest necessities for families with young children, but they can also be one of nature’s greatest enemies! That conflict is a big reason why more and more parents are turning to the old style cloth nappies in an attempt to reconcile their family with their beliefs.

Nappies have been around in cloth form since the Elizabethan era in England. Although they were only squares of linen back then, they have been used ever since. If you are over the age of forty then the likelihood is that you wore cloth nappies when you were a child, but from the 1970s onwards more and more children wore disposable nappies. They were actually introduced in the 1940s but were not affordable for the average family until thirty years later. Now, they are more common than ever and brand after brand adorns the supermarket shelves, but why should we regress and use cloth nappies in the 21st Century?

• There are a number of reasons why you should use eco friendly cloth nappies over disposables on your children. Whilst many of them relate to the environment, some also relate to the well-being of your child:Disposable nappies take, on average, 500 years to decompose. This is hotly debated because many experts have predicted that they will take much longer than that, but when you consider that disposable nappies actually account for one full black bin bag’s worth of trash every week per child then you get an idea of just how big a problems this is. 90% of nappies will end up in landfill sites so we are degrading the earth.
• Washing a disposable nappy 400 times is comparable to the manufacturing of one nappy in terms of the amount of energy that is used in both processes. This makes the cloth nappy far more energy efficient and in keeping with a greener lifestyle.
• The average baby will use over a thousand disposable nappies in one year, but would only need between twenty and thirty cloth nappies for the same period of time. Of course, some families would purchase more to accommodate physical growth, but the number is still nowhere near as large. In terms of the financial and environmental burden that the former brings, cloth nappies seem infinitely preferable.
• You can purchase environmentally friendly cloth nappies that are made of hemp, wool and organic cotton now so even the material that they are made with will not damage the environment! Not to mention the fact that they would be extremely kind on your little one’s skin.
• Finally, baby faeces that are left as rubbish for two weeks contains around 100 viruses on average. If you think about the fact that the faeces is not going through a proper sewerage treatment plant but is instead filtering through the groundwater system. It could actually make its way into your own water supply at a later date. You may want to seriously consider using cloth nappies. They are better all around for you, your family, and the environment in general so they are by far the better choice!

-babiesonline