Diapers: Cloth or Disposable

Cloth Diapers: Many parents wonder about what kind of diapers to use. Cloth diapers are so soft, and smell so wholesome. They seem like an easy solution if they are supplied by a company that picks up dirty diapers and delivers fresh ones. But the dirty diapers do pile up, and can smell until they are collected. Water with a bit of vinegar in the receptacle helps keep down odors.

If you have the energy, you can wash your own—in a soft detergent. Some babies are sensitive to certain detergents. If you use cloth diapers and your baby develops a rash in the diaper area, remember detergent sensitivity as a possibility. With cloth diapers, plastic pants are necessary to contain the "overflow." But frequent changes will be necessary, because plastic pants can hold in the ammonia from urine, and irritate the baby's skin.

Disposable Diapers: Many parents in the United States have chosen disposable diapers, though they are expensive and clog up our landfills. (In some highly populated countries, such a shift would be an ecological catastrophe.) But parents who prefer them feel that disposable diapers are easier to change, and appreciate that they can take dirty ones out with the trash. When they fit well, the baby is not likely to leak around them to wet or soil parents as they cuddle him.

But the plastic around the paper diaper can be too effective, trapping the ammonia from urine the way plastic pants do. A diaper rash may certainly result. Many disposable diapers, though, are pretreated with an anti-ammonia agent that may help to combat diaper rashes.

Disposable diapers make up 4 or 5 percent of the garbage that goes into our nation's landfills—annually contributing an estimated 5 million tons of untreated human waste and 2 billion tons overall when you include the plastic and paper of disposables. They also leach environmental contaminants as well as human waste, which can threaten groundwater and nearby streams and rivers. So many babies using so many diapers is surely a threat to our environment. In their defense, the disposable diaper manufacturers argue that cloth diapers take their toll too, with the hot water and soap it takes to wash them. But then disposables require lots of water and plastic and paper in their manufacture, for a product that is used once. The choice between cloth and disposable diapers will be a family's choice. (Childcare providers are likely to voice their preference too.) Though an individual baby may do better with one kind than another (for example, due to a detergent sensitivity, one infant may be less prone to rashes in disposable diapers), cloth vs. disposable generally makes little difference to babies. The choice may matter more to these babies when they are grown and must contend with the environment that we have left them!

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