The Down and Dirty on Disposable Diapers
By: Lane Henry
Tags: Sustainability, Parenting, Future, Disposable Income, Environment

The Down and Dirty on Disposable Diapers

Where we are, how we got here and is there a good alternative

Photo by Zelle Duda on Unsplash

Disposable diapers are amazing.

Your child’s waste is contained. You see it for only a few moments (hopefully) and then you close up the diaper. Poof! Gone from your thoughts and into the trash can or Diaper Genie.

The invention of disposable diapers was a miracle of convenience for parents and it seems that the world has not looked back. No more washing poop from cloth diapers. After all, hasn’t society evolved past cloth diapers?

But let’s stop and consider the impact of moving to disposable diapers. An average baby uses between eight and twelve diapers per day in the first year. That equates to just over 3,500 diapers for one baby in one year and a total of more than 7,000 through potty training. For one tiny human.

The numbers are staggering, but is it enough to consider alternatives. Is there even a good alternative? Let’s look at how we got here and what initiatives are cropping up to tackle the solution of diaper waste.

History of Disposable Diapers

Before the 1960s, parents had no choice but to cloth diaper their babies.

Proctor and Gamble introduced Pampers in 1961 as the first disposable diaper. After years of tri-folding diapers and securing them using safety pins, mothers and other caretakers had the convenience of disposable diapers. They were suddenly free from the burden of additional wash cycles.

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

The company aggressively advertised its diapers and the brand has become a household name. In Belgium, for example, “pamper” is even synonymous with the Dutch word for diaper. Vintage Pampers commercials from the 1970s are still available online. At the end of one video, a mother who just discovered disposable diapers says:

“Okay, hunny, it looks like you are going to be a happier baby from now on…and I’m going to be a happier mommy.”

We have come a long way from those first disposables. The technology has advanced significantly. Diapers started to have double gussets for fewer leaks, tabs that could be refastened, and super absorbent polymers. Introduced in 1984, super absorbent polymers can hold many more times their weight in water, meaning a drier baby and fewer diaper changes.

Without a doubt, diapers are quite an engineering feat. If you have any doubt, watch the short video below.

The power of a disposable diaper; video by author

An Explosion of Choice

Diaper choice has exploded. Walmart.com carries 15 different disposable diaper brands, with some of the major brands marketing multiple types of diapers under the same brand. Amazon.com carries additional brands, including a few niche brands, like Honest Company.

We have also seen the rise of store-brand disposable diapers, which provide a cheap alternative to name brands. It seems that each supermarket and pharmacy chain sells its own white label brand. In the U.S., for example, Aldi sells its store-brand pack of diapers for about 11 cents per diaper. These are a blessing for families just trying to get by or for cost-conscious parents. In my experience, these diapers work just as well as name brands, like Pampers and Luvs, but for full disclosure, my testing of name brands has been very limited.

Many brands have developed premium diapers carrying one or more of the following descriptors: eco-friendly, bio-based, ultra-sensitive, or biodegradable diapers. Some contain natural products (such as bamboo fiber) and most are free from chemical treatment.

But just because diapers market themselves as eco-friendly, are they better? In theory, these premium diapers make sense environmentally, but in practice, they may not make much of a difference. We will look at these premium diapers later in this article.

Amount of Diapers Used

On average, children wear diapers for two to three years until they are potty trained, while some children are potty trained even later.

The first few months are intense for diaper-wearing, with babies going through approximately twelve diapers per day. This number decreases until they only go through only a few diapers while they are being potty trained. Based on these numbers and assuming three years until fully potty trained, one baby can go through over 7,600 diapers.

Image by author

Image by author

Cost of Diapers

If you use store brand diapers, expect to pay approximately $1,300 in diapers for each child. This cost is easily doubled by using name brand diapers and even more with premium/eco-friendly diapers. Parents have to be very committed to an environmental purpose to stomach such a high price tag for biodegradable or ecologically friendly diapers.

Image by author

The cost per diaper goes up as the baby advances through the different sizes. This makes sense because the diapers get bigger and there is more material involved, like the super absorbent polymers to suck up all that pee.

Sometimes the diaper companies and stores get tricky about this. On a website for a local pharmacy chain, I noticed the price tag of €25 (approximately $27.50) for a pack of diapers. The package price stayed the same for four sizes of diapers, but the amount of diapers in each pack decreases. This is a typical marketing strategy in many industries. It works well in the diaper industry because, by a few months into the baby’s diaper-wearing career, parents usually have a default brand choice when going to a store. Many might not even notice the price going up.

Image by author

Environmental Impact of Disposable Diapers

One-time-use diapers were a boon for women’s liberation and convenience, but almost immediately, they became a significant waste stream. By the 1980s, diapers accounted for 1.4% of all municipal waste put into landfills in the United States. Today, disposable diapers accounted for 2.4% of all municipal waste put in landfills, according to the latest report by the EPA (2017).

Two percent sounds pretty minimal at first, right? Well, that’s 3.3 million tons of diapers each year. Based on my calculations, if this would only be baby diapers, 20 billion diapers end up in a landfill each year, plus another 4.9 billion diapers burned. Of course, these numbers from the EPA include some adult diapers, but the split is not clear.

The numbers add up quickly in every household. Remember those 7,600 diapers for each child? That is the volume of 20 bathtubs and the weight of a small-sized car, as shown in the infographic below.

Image by author

It’s not just the amount of waste that’s concerning. Many people worry about the toxic chemicals and untreated waste released from diapers into the environment as they sit in landfills. However, modern landfills are designed to prevent contamination of groundwater, but this concern is real for diapers that don’t make it into landfills and are littered into nature, being exposed to the elements.

Another concern is environmental impacts upstream of diaper usage, for the manufacturing of the diapers and their raw materials. Basically, a lot of trees and oil. Trees are used for wood pulp in the diaper, oil is used for the plastics in the diapers and their packaging, and water and energy are consumed in the manufacturing process.

Alternatives to Disposable Diapers

Okay, now that you are officially depressed, let’s talk about what can be done to combat the growing waste of disposable diapers.

Three main alternatives exist to decrease the number of disposable diapers used by a child.

1. Eco-Friendly/Biodegradable Diapers — Perhaps the most mainstream of the three is choosing to buy eco-friendly diapers that have a higher composition of biodegradable materials. Now, the jury is out on whether these diapers have a huge benefit to the environment. After all, most still end up in a landfill. One thing is clear is that it is a huge hit to your wallet, costing you up to 3x more than buying store brand diapers.

These diapers are meant to have less of an environmental impact during manufacturing and after disposal, but how much depends on the brand. Some diapers within this category are 100% biodegradable and compostable, but some can be as low as 65% biodegradable and still contain plastic. (By comparison, regular diapers are said to be only 25–35% biodegradable.)

The sad truth is that most parents will just throw these diapers in the trash and then, “biodegradable” means nothing. If these diapers go in the same waste stream as other diapers — which most likely will — they end up in landfills. Starved of much oxygen and sunlight in the landfill, these eco-friendly diapers will most likely take just as long to decompose as basic diapers.

Both eco-friendly and basic diapers can be composted, in different proportions. So what does this actually mean? If parents separate the inner filling (cellulose and super absorbent polymers) from the plastic, this filler material can be put in a compost pile or bin. Mixed loosely with other compost and soil, the diaper filling can break down within a few months. Only wet/pee diapers should be composted. Poopy diapers shouldn’t be composted because they contain bacteria. Even with only the wet diapers, since this is not an industrial composting process subjected to high heat, the resulting compost should only be used for non-edible purposes (plants, trees, and flowers).

But since the composting process takes time and effort, most premium diapers will still end up in the same waste stream as other diapers.

2. Cloth Diapers — Another alternative to disposable diapers is to use cloth diapers for your child. The most common form of modern cloth diapering involves three pieces: a cloth diaper with plastic snaps or Velcro, an absorbent inner liner, and an optional disposable liner. There are also hybrid solutions with a cloth outer layer and a disposable absorbent liner, such as gDiapers.

Some parents also choose to cloth diaper part of the time, still using a disposable diaper during the nights and when traveling. Although still producing diaper waste, using cloth diapers for part of the time can easily cut diaper usage by more than half.

3. Potty train a child early — This last alternative can either be a strategy of potty training a child a few months earlier or potty training them from a very early age. The latter is called Elimination Communication or Natural Infant Hygiene, which was popularized by Ingrid Bauer in her “Diaper Free” book. And I know most parents are rolling their eyes and sarcastically thinking, good luck potty training early! It is an alternative, though.

Is Diaper Recycling an Alternative?

There is some light at the end of the tunnel — diaper recycling. I don’t mention this as one of the alternatives above because it is still in its infant stage.

In my research, I came across two main diaper reuse projects — TerraCycle and FaterSMART. TerraCycle is a New Jersey-based recycling company. Partnering with DYPER, a subscription-based diaper service, TerraCycle composts subscribers’ dirty diapers via mail-in boxes. The service only sells bamboo-based, compostable diapers and the finished compost is used for vegetation along highways.

FaterSMART is a joint venture with Procter & Gamble (the company that produces Pampers) and Angelini. It has established a pilot recycling plant in Italy that recycles used absorbent hygiene products, including dirty diapers. The process sanitizes the diapers and recovers plastic, cellulose, and super absorbent polymers.

However, diapers don’t get recycled into new diapers. Like most other recycling processes, recycled material can only be used in products of lesser quality, a concept known as “downcycling.” The recovered super absorbent polymers have less absorbency and the recovered plastic has a lesser quality than the original. In theory, absorbent material from recycled diapers can go into absorbent products for pets (like cat litter and dog pee pads), disposable bed liners, or fiber additives in concrete. The plastic can be mixed with other materials to make plastic wood-like products (park benches and pallets), roof tiles, tubing, and other products.

Other initiatives exist around the world. Amsterdam has twelve diaper recycling bins and the used diapers get sent to the FaterSMART plant in Italy. TinyTots is a San Francisco-based pickup service for compostable diapers. Universities and private companies are experimenting in diaper recycling technology, such as in Taiwan and the Netherlands, but many of these projects have yet to be realized.

Graphic by author; background photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

All of these projects provide a reason for optimism. Companies, governments, and other organizations want to find solutions to diaper waste and are willing to put money into this goal. However, similar initiatives have failed in the past. Canadian-based Knowaste was an early-mover in the industry and operated a diaper recycling plant in the UK and the Netherlands. The company closed these facilities in 2013 and 2007, respectively, for a variety of reasons, including profitability, competition from traditional waste plants, and failure to get plans approved by local governments.

We still need to hold our breath on whether diaper recycling and composting will become a reality, especially on a broad scale. Three major obstacles need to be solved to make diaper manufacturing mainstream.

Legislation — In the European Union, and perhaps other places, recycled material from diapers is still classified as a waste product, not as secondary recycled material. The resulting material from diaper recycling is fully sanitized, but the classification still exists. The law would have to change in Europe and still, the social acceptance of products made from recycled diapers may be mixed. Strict regulations over hygiene and health need to be created and enforced. Diaper collection — For used diapers to be processed, diapers need to be divided into a separate waste stream within households and childcare facilities. Families also need to willingly separate it from their other trash. FaterSMART estimates that more than 15% of Italians have access to a separate waste collection for diapers, but this is an anomaly. A limited amount of diaper recycling bins also exist in Amsterdam, but since no diaper recycling plant exists in the Netherlands, these diapers are transported over 1,000 kilometers (600+ miles) to the FaterSMART facility in Italy to be recycled. Profitability — This ties into the first two barriers. Plants need to have a willing buyer. Manufacturers need to be willing to buy the secondary raw materials recovered from the recycled dirty diapers. Additionally, the collection of diapers needs to be widespread and in enough volume to supply the recycling/composting facilities. Preferably, the diapers collected should go to local facilities to cut down on the cost of transporting these diapers.

Summary

The subject of disposable diapers is a tricky subject. Parenting is hard enough and disposables are convenient and the most mainstream route.

Disposable diapers do not fully include all costs for their disposal and ironically, the diapers with the most environmental impact may be the cheapest. It is similar to how fast food or canned food is usually cheaper than buying fresh produce. The market doesn’t price in the full cost of a product, such as disposal costs or adverse environmental effects. The choice is left to the consumer and often, the wallet wins out.

Should everyone switch to eco-friendly disposable diapers? Well, asking parents to pay 2x more for eco-friendly diapers at questionable environmental benefits doesn’t seem to be the answer.

Diaper waste is a “tragedy of the commons”. We are impacted not only by what we do, but by what others all around the world do. In the thick of parenting, it is difficult to stick to environmental principals when it requires a higher cost or larger time commitment to you, while others choose to use the basic disposable diapers. Why would we do all the effort if we still get the negative environmental effects from everyone else? The only benefit is an intrinsic one — that you’re doing something good for the environment. But let’s face it, that pat on the back isn’t going to get you any more sleep at night or money in your wallet.

Why should parents bear the decision of having to save the environment or not? Shouldn’t that be the responsibility of companies that produce the diapers and governments who are trying to reduce overall waste?

What I honestly believe is that there has to be more local incentives to either use cloth diapers or buy eco-friendly diapers that will actually be composted or recycled. Municipalities should offer incentives for people to use them. Some municipalities charge based on the amount of waste a family produces, but in many areas, only a flat fee is charged for garbage disposal. We need to creatively think together to decide how families can be incentivized to act greener.

Disposable diapers may take up to 500 years to decompose, so it is without a doubt that the choices we make about which diapers to use stay with us forever.

Unless parents are incentivized to use alternatives, then standard disposable diapers will continue to be the path of least resistance. Especially for sleep-deprived parents just trying to make it through this bumpy road of parenthood.

What else can you do?

Support and encourage local initiatives to investigate diaper collection and recycling/composting

Support and encourage local projects and financial incentives to use cloth or eco-friendly diapers

Urge lawmakers to enforce diaper companies to carry some of the burden for the recycling and/or disposal of their products (Extended Producer Responsibility)

Do you know of initiatives in other countries or municipalities to recycle diapers or incentivize the use of cloth/eco-friendly diapers? Please let me know in the comments.