Conference moira::parenting_v3

    Oh no, all my angst was for nothing!! :-)
    
    Lucy
    

         Thanks for sharing this with us.  My guilt of using Pampers is now
    gone!
    
    Diane
    

    It's funny. We use home-washed diapers strictly for cost sake...no one
    will ever convince me it *costs* more money to launder at home! But we
    use disposable when going out or going away. And it's amazing the
    condemnation we've heard (subtly, of course) from those who know we
    wash our own at home!I guess they assumed we were some sort of super
    environmentally consciuos consumers and found it incongruous that we
    wouldn't care to lug bags full of dirty/wet cloth diapers around with
    us! Now we can tell them that they can rest easy about the
    disposables...and bug us about the cloth, I guess!
    
    -dave--

    
    Well, go ahead, F-L-A-M-E O-N me!  But Jim/I never once considered
    anything BUT disposable diapers.
    
    Sorry!!!
    Dottie
    

    I've read some honest attempts to do similiar long-term analyses of
    various competing technologies (cotton shirts vs. drip-dry comes to
    mind).
    
    Which technology "wins" winds up depending on lots of debatable
    assumptions: in the wash-at-home vs. disposable question, those
    asumptions would include:
    
    o	How many washings a cotton diaper can take;
    o	How much detergent is used, and how much it costs;
    o	Whether hot water is used, and how it is heated;
    o	Whether a dryer is used, and how it is heated;
    o	Whether other chemicals are used, and how much they cost;
    o	How often both kinds are changed, and whether they are
    	changed at the same rate;
    o	How many cloth diapers one buys;
    o	How many children one has (to re-use diapers on);
    o	What the residual value of cloth diapers is when the child
    	no longer uses them;
    o	How much shorter a life-span the washer and dryer will have;
    o	How much to value your labor time washing;
    o	How much time it takes;
    o	Number of shopping trips for disposables vs. detergent;
    o	Cost and pollution result of extra car trips or extra load;
    o	What is the pollution cost of distribution of the diapers
    	to supermarkets;
    o	Ditto the distribution of water and electricity;
    o	Ditto garbage pick-up;
    o	and on and on...
    
    It's very possible that some people who use a small number of cloth
    diapers which they air-dry in the summer and have cheap gas heat
    and many children, and use low amounts of cheap detergent, etc. would
    produce very little pollution compared to average usage of disposables,
    while a family with one child who wash with super-hot water heated by
    electricity and use lots of bleach, flabric softener and and so on would
    be far more polluting than that average usage of disposables.
    
    So don't rely too heavily on the "bottom line" of a report like the
    one cited; unless you can compare your usage pattern to the ones in
    the report, you might be way ahead or way behind in cost and pollution.
    
    			-John Bishop

    John, generally the reports state only the horrors of disposables. By
    posting the article I was trying to point out just what you said about
    the disposables.... its not that simple.  But it was refreshing to see
    something good said about a convenience item.

Exhuming landfills to find 10 year old baby poops?  Yuck!  THAT'S dedication 
to science.

Clay

    But what the article didn't mention was the wonderful, soft, fluffy
    feel of a clean, white cotton diaper.  We too use disposables when we
    travel, but there's nothing like patting that little butt with a *real*
    cotton diaper on it!
    
    Just MHO...
    
    Steve

    Steve,
    
    ...Not to mention that cute little duck-waddle when they start walking,
    and they're wearing two cotton diapers and a double-thickness wool
    diaper cover...Daniel's butt stuck out about 6" behind him. When he
    gave up diapers it looked like he'd lost several pounds!
    
    Lucy  
    

    And at the risk of soundly too cynical, who are Franklin Associates of
    Prairie Rapids (or whatever), Kansas, and who paid them to do this
    study?
    
    $10/week to wash diapers?  Highly unlikely.
     (make that $20/week until recently when we got down to only one in
      diapers) 
    
    Kit

    I was ready to use disposables when Ellen was born in September, but my
    husband convinced me to go with cloth. We are really happy with them,
    and are planning to continue using them.  However, Ellen wears a thick
    disposable at night - she sleeps 11 hours - and wet cotton worn for
    that long is not comfortable. I don't want to double up.
    
    It would be nice if Proctor & Gamble's efforts to make their
    disposables degrade work out.  Aside from the concern over bacteria,
    viruses and the like, the sheer amount of diapers that we as a society
    throw away bothers me.  (And now we have throw-away cameras thanks to
    Kodak.  Where will it all end?)
    
    Mary

re .11 (a slight rathole)

>                            (And now we have throw-away cameras thanks to
>    Kodak.  Where will it all end?)

Since the cameras are sent in to processing plants, they're easy to recycle
(unlike disposable diapers).

    re the previous reply....those throw away cameras are sent WHERE?  Have
    you checked out Spags school house film developing operation lately?  I
    have, I dropped my first AND LAST disposable camera there last week,
    they just drop the shell in the trash!  As for picture quality, in a
    word NEVER AGAIN...Lousy!
    
    I second the sentiment of .7 that has to be dedication!
    
    By the way...is there *anything else* beside disposables?  I always
    thought the bags of cloth diapers should be renamed Dusting Cloths!!
    
    Lyn