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Cloth diapers are good. We used them for our last kid with a diaper service and are going to do it again washing them ourselves with our next who is due at the

Cloth diapers are good. We used them for our last kid with a diaper service and are going to do it again washing them ourselves with our next who is due at the end of the month. Regular diapers are useful to have either way. But cloth diapers are obviously much better for the environment and if they're an option for you, you should consider them. Not a hard concept, not worth a big discussion.

xbryanx 7mo ago
> But cloth diapers are obviously much better for the environment What about this is obvious? Water usage, transportation, fabrication factors, different usage patterns; seems like there are many things to tease apart here.
- the_gastropod 7mo ago
  I think as a general rule: a reusable thing is more environmentally friendly than a single-use thing (especially when the reuse cycles are high). Yes, there are exceptions. But you’ve got the bizarre case to make here, if you want to suggest single-use diapers (that also use water, require transportation, are fabricated, packaged, etc.) are a more efficient use of resources.
  - s1artibartfast 7mo ago
    I don't think it's that crazy. It's fairly well documented that a reusable cloth shopping bag has a break even with plastic shopping bags at around a 100-200 reuses, something most people won't reach. With diapers, you have wash water, electricity, and a gas dryer in the mix. Then you have people in this thread talking about services to pickup and wash them for you. How many trips car trips is that- 2 a week?
    - the_gastropod 7mo ago
      1. Id guess an average cloth diaper gets reused more than 100x 2. Think about the mass differences you’re comparing here. A standard plastic grocery bag is about 5 grams of material. A standard cloth bag is around 250. Cloth vs disposable diapers are approximately the same amount of material. This is the “gotcha, vegan! Iceberg lettuce is less efficient on a CO2 per calorie basis than beef! Eat more steak to be greener” type of argument. 3. You’re doing the thing contrarians often do of only counting one side of the ledger, while hand waving away the other. Disposable diapers require water, tree growing, tree cutting, tree transport, tree processing, bleaching, transport, packaging, product transport, disposal transport, disposal processing, etc etc. for each time a diaper is used. Really think about the full cradle-to-grave cycle of these things. Reusables must be washed, yes. But they, importantly, don’t require any of the other steps, which is, y’know, extremely significant. It’s not even remotely plausible single-use diapers are more resourceful than cloth ones.
      - s1artibartfast 7mo ago
        I think it's plausible that cloth diapers are worse per use than disposable ones due to the mass industrialization of manufacture and resource intensity of cleaning. You are right that we have to look at the full breakdown of the cradle to grave resource cost. A washer and dry cycle is about 5 kilowatt hours, which is about the average household energy consumption in China or twice that in India. Financially, in California it's about $3 per wash for power before accounting for water, soap, ect. Let's say you got 10 diapers per day and washing every 2 days. That's 15 cents and 250 watt hours per diaper use. American use a lot of electricity, so washing diapers would be about a 10% household increase
    - sfpotter 7mo ago
      Cloth shopping bags are a really bad comparison here. Some things working in favor of cloth diapers here are general greening of the grid, mitigating issues with electricity consumption. Beyond that, line drying diapers works very well and even preserves the life of the diapers. Cloth diapers hold their value extremely well and can easily be bought/sold/given away on sites like OfferUp or groups like Buy Nothing. ALso, "2 car trips per week": do you have no idea how this works? No diaper service in their right mind would send out cars to make bespoke trips to individuals. They're done using a big truck on a schedule to amortize the cost of pick up and drop off as much as possible.
  - tshaddox 7mo ago
    But there are lots of exceptions, right? Like a huge bunch of medical equipment where cleaning the thing to make it safe for reuse would be both more expensive and worse for the environment than single-use versions.
    - markdown 7mo ago
      In many parts of the world they throw them in a basin of water and laundry detergent, let them soak for a bit, then hand wash them. No medical equipment necessary. Of course if you have a washing machine you just launder them like any other item of clothing.
  - xbryanx 7mo ago
    My primary point is that it's not a slam dunk for either side. Nothing's obvious about the "impact" here. I you're interested in picking a product based on its environmental impact, there are going to be many factors to consider. Just peruse this 200 page report from the UK government on the subject: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c4096ed915d7d70d1d993/scho0505bjcw-e-e.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c4096ed915...
    - sfpotter 7mo ago
      This study has serious methodological issues. I would encourage you to carefully peruse it yourself before citing. This is far from the only issue, but the fact that someone who works at Procter and Gamble is on the study's advisory board is... fun.
  - thatfrenchguy 7mo ago
    Eh, you have to wash poop off them in a washer at high temps, so it’s a bit harder to compute. IIRC if you use the dryer it’s a wash: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c4096ed915d7d70d1d993/scho0505bjcw-e-e.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c4096ed915...
    - sfpotter 7mo ago
      This study has issues. Take a closer look at it. See my other comment on here responding to someone else who linked to it.
swarnie 7mo ago
What is a diaper service?
- 7777332215 7mo ago
  DaaS
- karmelapple 7mo ago
  A service that comes to pick up dirty cloth diapers and drops off clean cloth diapers. Example: https://www.diaperstork.com https://www.diaperstork.com
  - tshaddox 7mo ago
    I would be extremely surprised if that’s better for the environment than disposable diapers. The key for most of this stuff is economies of scale. It’s why the produce from the supermarket that was carried thousands of miles on a cargo ship is better for the environment than the produce from the farmer’s market that was carried 50 miles in a diesel truck.
  - orsorna 7mo ago
    So this wipes out the savings you'd obtain just by buying diapers by the bulk.
a_cool_username 7mo ago
I had planned to do cloth diapers if we had a diaper service available, for environmental reasons, but there's none where I live now and I definitely am not up for washing diapers by hand/pooping up my nice washing machine. Props to you for sticking with it.
- TheScaryOne 7mo ago
  They make portable nappy washing machines. They have resale value, just like well taken care of nappies.
tetromino_ 7mo ago
> But cloth diapers are obviously much better for the environment It's obvious only if you save and reuse the same set of cloth diapers for 2 or more babies. (Which places some constrains on brand, durability etc.) If you have only one kid, I am not sure which side is environmentally more friendly; growing and processing all that cotton (not to mention the plastic for all the waterproof covers) uses a lot of water and energy...
- sfpotter 7mo ago
  We kept the diapers from our diaper service and the covers. The washing machines used by the service are much beefier and can handle these kind of loads easily, and will generally be more water efficient. We also got a good number of used diapers on Offer Up. When we're done with our diapers, we will rehome them instead of throwing them out. How does this change your calculations?
  - sfpotter 7mo ago
    Oops, talked to my wife and realized I got a detail wrong: we did not keep the diapers from the service, we gave them back. And the diapers we got from the service were almost surely used by plenty of other people before. Someone else on here seemed confused about the logistics off the service. We lived in Brooklyn at the time. A big truck would drive around our neighborhood and pick up and drop off diapers from many people throughout the neighborhood at once. More amortization at work. Also, one more thing: we're big on line drying. We will primarily line dry these diapers instead of drying them in a machine. Oh, and one MORE thing: we got our current washer and dryer free from a friend who was about to throw them out when replacing them. There are so many ways to mitigate and reduce environmental impact beyond the simple-minded apples-to-apples comparison many in this thread seem to be doing.
    - blks 7mo ago
      Sorry, does the truck picks up dirty diapers? Or what’s the point of the pickup? How do you package them for pick up?
MisterMower 7mo ago
What is a diaper service?

xbryanx 7mo ago

> But cloth diapers are obviously much better for the environment What about this is obvious? Water usage, transportation, fabrication factors, different usage patterns; seems like there are many things to tease apart here.

the_gastropod 7mo ago
I think as a general rule: a reusable thing is more environmentally friendly than a single-use thing (especially when the reuse cycles are high). Yes, there are exceptions. But you’ve got the bizarre case to make here, if you want to suggest single-use diapers (that also use water, require transportation, are fabricated, packaged, etc.) are a more efficient use of resources.
- s1artibartfast 7mo ago
  I don't think it's that crazy. It's fairly well documented that a reusable cloth shopping bag has a break even with plastic shopping bags at around a 100-200 reuses, something most people won't reach. With diapers, you have wash water, electricity, and a gas dryer in the mix. Then you have people in this thread talking about services to pickup and wash them for you. How many trips car trips is that- 2 a week?
  - the_gastropod 7mo ago
    1. Id guess an average cloth diaper gets reused more than 100x 2. Think about the mass differences you’re comparing here. A standard plastic grocery bag is about 5 grams of material. A standard cloth bag is around 250. Cloth vs disposable diapers are approximately the same amount of material. This is the “gotcha, vegan! Iceberg lettuce is less efficient on a CO2 per calorie basis than beef! Eat more steak to be greener” type of argument. 3. You’re doing the thing contrarians often do of only counting one side of the ledger, while hand waving away the other. Disposable diapers require water, tree growing, tree cutting, tree transport, tree processing, bleaching, transport, packaging, product transport, disposal transport, disposal processing, etc etc. for each time a diaper is used. Really think about the full cradle-to-grave cycle of these things. Reusables must be washed, yes. But they, importantly, don’t require any of the other steps, which is, y’know, extremely significant. It’s not even remotely plausible single-use diapers are more resourceful than cloth ones.
    - s1artibartfast 7mo ago
      I think it's plausible that cloth diapers are worse per use than disposable ones due to the mass industrialization of manufacture and resource intensity of cleaning. You are right that we have to look at the full breakdown of the cradle to grave resource cost. A washer and dry cycle is about 5 kilowatt hours, which is about the average household energy consumption in China or twice that in India. Financially, in California it's about $3 per wash for power before accounting for water, soap, ect. Let's say you got 10 diapers per day and washing every 2 days. That's 15 cents and 250 watt hours per diaper use. American use a lot of electricity, so washing diapers would be about a 10% household increase
  - sfpotter 7mo ago
    Cloth shopping bags are a really bad comparison here. Some things working in favor of cloth diapers here are general greening of the grid, mitigating issues with electricity consumption. Beyond that, line drying diapers works very well and even preserves the life of the diapers. Cloth diapers hold their value extremely well and can easily be bought/sold/given away on sites like OfferUp or groups like Buy Nothing. ALso, "2 car trips per week": do you have no idea how this works? No diaper service in their right mind would send out cars to make bespoke trips to individuals. They're done using a big truck on a schedule to amortize the cost of pick up and drop off as much as possible.
- tshaddox 7mo ago
  But there are lots of exceptions, right? Like a huge bunch of medical equipment where cleaning the thing to make it safe for reuse would be both more expensive and worse for the environment than single-use versions.
  - markdown 7mo ago
    In many parts of the world they throw them in a basin of water and laundry detergent, let them soak for a bit, then hand wash them. No medical equipment necessary. Of course if you have a washing machine you just launder them like any other item of clothing.
- xbryanx 7mo ago
  My primary point is that it's not a slam dunk for either side. Nothing's obvious about the "impact" here. I you're interested in picking a product based on its environmental impact, there are going to be many factors to consider. Just peruse this 200 page report from the UK government on the subject: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c4096ed915d7d70d1d993/scho0505bjcw-e-e.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c4096ed915...
  - sfpotter 7mo ago
    This study has serious methodological issues. I would encourage you to carefully peruse it yourself before citing. This is far from the only issue, but the fact that someone who works at Procter and Gamble is on the study's advisory board is... fun.
- thatfrenchguy 7mo ago
  Eh, you have to wash poop off them in a washer at high temps, so it’s a bit harder to compute. IIRC if you use the dryer it’s a wash: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c4096ed915d7d70d1d993/scho0505bjcw-e-e.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c4096ed915...
  - sfpotter 7mo ago
    This study has issues. Take a closer look at it. See my other comment on here responding to someone else who linked to it.

swarnie 7mo ago

What is a diaper service?

7777332215 7mo ago
DaaS
karmelapple 7mo ago
A service that comes to pick up dirty cloth diapers and drops off clean cloth diapers. Example: https://www.diaperstork.com https://www.diaperstork.com
- tshaddox 7mo ago
  I would be extremely surprised if that’s better for the environment than disposable diapers. The key for most of this stuff is economies of scale. It’s why the produce from the supermarket that was carried thousands of miles on a cargo ship is better for the environment than the produce from the farmer’s market that was carried 50 miles in a diesel truck.
- orsorna 7mo ago
  So this wipes out the savings you'd obtain just by buying diapers by the bulk.

a_cool_username 7mo ago

I had planned to do cloth diapers if we had a diaper service available, for environmental reasons, but there's none where I live now and I definitely am not up for washing diapers by hand/pooping up my nice washing machine. Props to you for sticking with it.

TheScaryOne 7mo ago
They make portable nappy washing machines. They have resale value, just like well taken care of nappies.

tetromino_ 7mo ago

> But cloth diapers are obviously much better for the environment It's obvious only if you save and reuse the same set of cloth diapers for 2 or more babies. (Which places some constrains on brand, durability etc.) If you have only one kid, I am not sure which side is environmentally more friendly; growing and processing all that cotton (not to mention the plastic for all the waterproof covers) uses a lot of water and energy...

sfpotter 7mo ago
We kept the diapers from our diaper service and the covers. The washing machines used by the service are much beefier and can handle these kind of loads easily, and will generally be more water efficient. We also got a good number of used diapers on Offer Up. When we're done with our diapers, we will rehome them instead of throwing them out. How does this change your calculations?
- sfpotter 7mo ago
  Oops, talked to my wife and realized I got a detail wrong: we did not keep the diapers from the service, we gave them back. And the diapers we got from the service were almost surely used by plenty of other people before. Someone else on here seemed confused about the logistics off the service. We lived in Brooklyn at the time. A big truck would drive around our neighborhood and pick up and drop off diapers from many people throughout the neighborhood at once. More amortization at work. Also, one more thing: we're big on line drying. We will primarily line dry these diapers instead of drying them in a machine. Oh, and one MORE thing: we got our current washer and dryer free from a friend who was about to throw them out when replacing them. There are so many ways to mitigate and reduce environmental impact beyond the simple-minded apples-to-apples comparison many in this thread seem to be doing.
  - blks 7mo ago
    Sorry, does the truck picks up dirty diapers? Or what’s the point of the pickup? How do you package them for pick up?

MisterMower 7mo ago

What is a diaper service?