Reasons to Switch to Cloth: Reason #1 The Environment, Part one.

The Environment, Part One:

You must excuse me, I have to preface this post by saying that the older we get the more my husband and I embrace our "hippyness". You may not share our passion for a clean, green earth- but please read on despite our differences : )

Let's talk trash.

The first itch I had to try cloth was back in the summer of 2009. My husband is in charge of trash duty so I rarely even looked at our trash bin, except to tell his how stinky it was. As I was outside more and more that summer I began to peek into the can (to throw out trash from my car, deposit litter from the street, etc..). What I witnessed was incredible. More than half of our large outdoor trash can was filled with diapers! I'm sure if you've ever had an infant you may have noticed the same thing. Our trash output more than doubled after having a child and what was doubling was the diapers!

OK, so diapers double your household trash output, what's the big deal? I'll contribute my 3+ years of diapers to the landfill and then it'll be over with. Well, IF your child is potty trained by 3 (which in disposables is no easy feat) this means you will use approximitely 9,360 diapers (average 60 diapers per week). Experts estimate that this comes out to be over 3 tons of diaper garbage per child.

To make things worse- did you know that we still do not know how long it takes for a disposable diaper to decompose? Most estimate between 200 and 500 years. Truth is, we can't say for sure because we have not seen proof that even the earliest diapers (invented over 50 years ago) have decomposed yet.

Please take a long careful look at what kind of legacy you are leaving behind for your children, your children's children, your children's children's children, etc...