Sustainable Saturday - The diaper challenge

Well it was a busy day on Saturday as we attended yet another wedding and I never got around to posting Sustainable Saturday. Then on Sunday we experienced the wind leftover from Hurricane Ike and lost power. As I write this we still do not have power and they are saying it will potentially be the end of the week before it is restored!! We actually watched a tree in our neighbor’s yard come down, literally 2 feet in front of us as my husband and I were walking down the sidewalk to check with one of our other neighbors. Then a short while later we saw our neighbor’s tree across the street be completely uprooted and fall over. I will have to post pictures. It was pretty unbelievable.

Anyways, without further ado, Sustainable Saturday – The diaper challenge.

Now we use reusable shopping bags, recycle faithfully and even have our own compost pile which is 35 some years old thanks to the previous owner of our house. But, I am ashamed to say I have never put either of my children in a cloth diaper. That’s right, green as we may try to be, we use disposable diapers. Three years ago when my daughter was born, I searched everywhere for a cloth diaper service and found none. They had all apparently gone out of business in our area at one time or another. At that time I wasn’t really interested in purchasing my own cloth diapers and washing them myself as I was planning on returning to work full time. The child care center we had chosen had a pretty strict policy about not allowing cloth diapers. I explored the other viable options, Seventh Generation diapers and g-diapers both of which are more environmentally friendly, but both still disposable. I tried the Seventh Generation diapers, but quite honestly found them not to be very absorbent, etc. I priced out the g-diapers , but just couldn't bring myself to spend that much money on diapers.

Fast forward to today. Now almost three years into our parenting journey, we are still using disposable diapers. I have recently been researching our options once again. I received a list of products from a friend who is choosing to pursue a more environmentally friendly diaper. I have also spoken with the child care center that our children attend and they are now open to the idea.

I am now myself on a new challenge to find a better alternative to the ever popular disposable diaper. I am hoping to find success without busting my diaper budget, that will be the real challenge.

Brand reviews and a wealth of other cloth diapering info.

Brief description of the different types of cloth diapers.

The Diaper Hyena is a good resource too.