I think my neighbors think I'm a slob. There's only three of us in my household. That includes a toddler, and every week on trash day I haul four giant garbage bags to the curb like Santa Clause, despite a two bag per household county restriction. In addition, I have a mountain of recyclables. I feel there should be a parenting disclaimer in hospital delivery rooms warning about the the amount of diaper waste little ones make. What is most disturbing are the statistics regarding diaper waste worldwide.
In 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports more than 20 billion disposable diapers sent to landfills, which accounts to nearly 3.5 million tons of waste. I'm not a tree-hugging hippie, but these numbers are shocking, and I see the impact from just my household. I cannot imagine seeing the pile of dirty diapers worldwide. Isn't there something we can do?
I tried cloth diapers for a while, but the hassle of them leaking or being so disgusting that you don't want them in your washing machine; the stench from the diaper pick-up bin after a few days; the extra laundry, to my never-ending laundry, etc...let's just say I am not a fan of cloth diapers! But I understand from the environmental standpoint why some moms choose this method. The EPA advises that it takes 3.4 billions gallons of fuel oil per year and 200,000 trees to manufacture disposable diapers. Landfills are flooded with them, and I am unsure of the solution. So the question is do we deal with the inconvenience of cloth diapering because it saves the planet, or do we save moms' sanity when it is just easier to throw away a diaper? I don't have the answer, but it appears no one else does either. Such is life...
-Leslie Osmond
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