Are disposable-diaper proponents all wet?

By ANN WEBER
Toledo Blade
Monday, September 24, 2007

Cloth diapers.

Yuck.

Shelly De Meo is used to reactions like that when she tells people she diapers her 18-month-old daughter, Sage, in cloth.

"The biggest thing I hear from people is 'eeoow,' " admitted the Toledo, Ohio, mom, one of an estimated 5 percent to 10 percent of parents who use cloth diapers for their infants and toddlers, either exclusively or in combination with disposables.

But what the cloth camp lacks in numbers, it makes up for in fervor, pointing out that today's cloth diapers are much improved from the plain, ill-fitting wads that our mothers and grandmothers -- and their mothers and grandmothers -- pinned around their babies. They say cloth diapers are cute, economical and easy to use, and they contend cloth is healthier for their children and more environmentally friendly than the disposables that have come to dominate the diaper market since they were introduced in 1961.

The other side begs to differ, of course. And an Ohio State University extension study done in 1990 by Joyce A. Smith and Norma Pitts, both now retired, concluded: "No evidence exists that one method is clearly superior in terms of impact on health, environment and economic issues."

If kids could vote on the choice, 27-month-old Sage Colon apparently would cast hers for cloth.

"She's very vocal about what diaper she wants to use," said her mother, Julie Colon of Perrysburg, Ohio. It seems that one day when Sage was at the baby sitter's house, the sitter accidentally used a disposable diaper when she changed the toddler. "Sage was hollering at her and yelling 'no, no,' ripped the diaper off and threw it at her, and went over and got one of her cloth diapers," Colon said. "Nothing speaks better than an angry toddler."

But in speaking with some other parents about cloth diapers, Colon encounters the same "eeoow" that De Meo does.

"Usually they're like, 'that's disgusting,' or 'why would you do that?' The quickest way to stop those questions is to show them whatever she has on at the time. They're cute, they're different colors, some are embroidered. Or I tell them, 'feel how nice and soft this is.' They're expecting to see the pins and the rubber pants."

Today's cloth-diaper choices include styles that are contoured, fitted with elastic around the legs and "All-in-Ones" that don't require a cover. The old rubber pants have been replaced with water-resistant covers made of nylon, wool or polyurethane laminate (referred to as PUL), a polyester fabric that's laminated on one side. Covers can be a pull-on pant or a wrap that is secured with snaps or Velcro.

"It can seem a little overwhelming to start," acknowledged De Meo, a massage therapist. Both she and Colon said they had tried and then given up on cloth diapers at one time because they didn't have enough information and didn't know anyone they could turn to for answers.

Now that they know more, they want to help other parents who might be using disposables because they aren't aware of today's cloth-diaper options or don't know enough about using them.

They've established an e-mail address that people can use to send them questions about cloth diapering (notyourgrannysdiapers(at)yahoo.com).

Two market forces work against cloth diapers, they say. One is that the high-quality, updated diapers and covers aren't readily available everywhere.

The second factor is the near-extinction of diaper services -- those businesses that come to the house, drop off a supply of clean diapers and take away the dirty ones.

"There are less than 100 diaper services that I know of in the country," said John A. Shiffert, executive director of the National Association of Diaper Services in suburban Philadelphia. "There were probably 1,000-plus at one time."

The association's Web site (diapernet.org) has a list of diaper services, both members and nonmembers.

At its peak, Diapers Unlimited (www.diapersunlt.com) in Kalamazoo, Mich., had 12,000 customers, three plants that did laundry and two sales offices, recalled Mary Hilton, who owned the company for 45 years and now works there part-time. When the cloth-diaper business went bust, the family company died, she said in a phone interview, and she sold it to the current owner, who has stayed afloat by diversifying into other types of laundry.

Both she and Shiffert of the national association said that diaper services boomed in the late 1980s and early 1990s after the industry commissioned studies on the environmental impact of disposable diapers. "We grew exponentially until we caught the attention of the disposable-diaper people who hadn't paid much attention to diaper services. They commissioned their own studies," Shiffert said.

While cloth proponents made their environmental case (and still do) by pointing to the use of raw materials to produce disposable diapers, and the billions of dirty diapers piling up in landfills, the other side has fought back by citing the water and energy required to wash and dry cloth diapers, and fuel used by commercial diaper services.

(Contact Ann Weber at aweber(at)theblade.com.)