flushable diapers

[memegarden]

Someone's come up with disposable diapers that are flushable and compostable. I think cloth still wins, but I applaud the vast improvement and hope it catches on wildly.

Comments

[valasia]

I'd be interested to know how they made them flushable, "women's sanitary" things aren't even flushable. Though now that I think about it, if they took this tech and applied it to that, it would be great too.

[memegarden]

They're made of wood pulp, mostly. Roughly like a big wad of toilet paper, with the same gel in it as standard disposables. They do warn that some sewage systems won't handle them well. Which makes sense, since some sewage systems don't handle big wads of toilet paper well either. And they also recommend flushing only the poopy ones, and composting the wet ones.

[corvideye]

R. e. cloth, I saw one article that said the power and water used to wash the cloth ones actually outweighed the production energy of disposables... though not the landfill aspect, I suppose. Mixed either way, so this new option sounds promising.

[memegarden]

I found this article on the uncertain tradeoffs:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/04/63182

[corvideye]

5,000 diapers, ye gods!

As far as things not degrading in landfills...I remember watching something about that back in high school, showing that even newspapers, highly degradable in outside conditions, don't break down in landfills. It sure seems that a step our society needs to take soon is public compost sites... not something I've heard mentioned in any recent greening discussions. If OCF can do it...

I'd had a similar thought when a local coffee shop introduced "compostable coffee cups": that's nice, but is anyone actually composting them?

[ariadne3]

In my Science of Sustainability class there were heated arguments (fomented by professor, evil little man,) about the environmental impact of styrofoam cups versus bringing and washing one's own. Something about the styrofoam taking less energy overall than the energy consumed washing the cup in a dishwasher. I suspect this study was done by washing ONLY the coffee mug in an otherwise empty dishwasher, and distance/energy consumed by transport was no where considered in the study. I made up a neat comparison of one of Caelin's lovely Anglo-Saxon beakers (made in Corvallis, purchased in Eugene,) versus the nearest manufacturer of styrofoam cups, which I think was in Thailand somewhere, via Texas

[memegarden]

We use a diaper service, and are very happy with the arrangement. They have apparently worked very hard to come up with the lowest-impact ways to get them clean, and say in their literature that they use

Here are a couple of links from their site about the comparisons:
http://www.seattlediaper.com/product_index.php?name=cloth_benefits

http://www.seattlediaper.com/product_index.php?name=whats_a_diaper

The second one says that this service uses only 2 cups of bleach per 200 lbs. of diapers.

[ariadne3]

That's wonderful. I know that my other friends in the area who have recently had children are either using a service, or are washing the cloth diapers on their own. I have a slight notion that the services have less environmental impact as a whole, since they can wash all of their clients' diapers together rather than in separate batches. Kind of like taking the bus versus driving a car, tho' not really. With all of Alex's developmental leaps and bounds (and climbs and marble fetchings,) she's sure to be out of them before you know it, anyway.

[memegarden]

Yes, they use much less water, detergent, and energy than an equivalent number of home washers and dryers would.