Cloth Diapers: The Battle Against Convenience and Marketing

It might seem that the debate between the cloth diaper camp and the disposable diaper camp is raging. However, a quick search leads one to conclude that the side with all the arguments and consequently doing most of the arguing is the one in support of cloth diapers.

There are many reasons why people choose to use cloth diapers, including environmental and economical and developmental. There's really only one logical reason that people choose disposables. Convenience. The convenience argument in any debate is not usually the most admired, and therefore few people outside of the diaper industry going out of their way to campaign for disposable diapers.  However, the overwhelming majority of babies today in the consumer developed world are wrapped up in disposable diapers. Convenience obviously counts for something and over the last 50 years, the incredible strength of the disposable diaper industry has given it some advantage in influencing the choices that are made.

The Environmental Argument
Some people decide to use cloth diapers because of a perceived responsibility to the environment. There are all kinds of ways that this issue can and is often argued. A very well known disposable diaper company states on its environmental FAQ page that the results of an independent study concluded "that there was not a clearly better or worse diapering choice, when it comes to environmental impact." and that the "contribution of solid waste to land fill" brought on by the storage of used disposable diapers is off set off set by the "more water, energy, and detergent" required for maintaining reusable diapers.

Of course, for such a study to be accurate at all it would have to take in to account the average of so many wide ranging variables it is quite likely that no significant conclusion could possibly be found. However, one can only imagine that an individual family choosing cloth diapers out of concern for its own environmental foot print would also be conscious about wasting water, energy and detergent, and would most likely use a less than average amount of each of these than a family without such a concern.

So for someone who is conscious and strongly motivated toward environmental stewardship it seems that using cloth diapers would be an easy decision.

The Economic Argument
Others choose cloth diapers for mainly economic reasons. Using cloth diapers can be significantly cheaper than using disposables, just like it's cheaper to buy reusable dishes once rather than continually using paper plates every day.

Even though the upfront investment for cloth diapers can be as high as several hundred dollars for the fancy types it is difficult to imagine any normal scenario where it is more affordable to use disposable diapers, which can add up to several thousand dollars in the diapering life of the baby. Some might argue that the time for clean up should be considered, but this would easily be offset by the amount of times one must visit diaper aisle at the store or the inevitable special trips to the store for a pack diapers.

The only argument that comes close to balancing out the cost difference between cloth diapers and disposable diapers is the expense of cleaning cloth diapers. But again, if someone makes the decision to use cloth diapers for economic reasons, then they would most likely also find the most affordable way to clean them.

The Developmental Argument: Potty Training
One of the lesser spoken of arguments for using cloth diapers is that babies in cloth diapers tend to potty train quicker than babies in disposable diapers. Cloth diapers don't include the absorbent chemicals that are found in disposables. In disposables a child may not even feel the discomfort of a dirty diaper, and therefore are less motivated to do something about it.
 
The Argument for Disposables: Convenience
The truth is that the only argument that any one has for disposables is that they are convenient for the diaper changer. The convenience of disposable diapers is the same as the convenience of paper plates. There's nothing to wash and therefore less work to do. Many die hard cloth diaper users challenge the convenience argument by pointing out that one using cloth diapers rarely has to stop what they're doing and make a special trip to the diaper store.  However, in a straight up competition of convenience it is likely that disposables will come out on top.

The Market
Until recently, before disposables came along to compete, a diaper was a piece of cloth that was folded and fastened around the baby's bottom with pins. Today, there are many reusable diaper choices on the market, ranging from the simple pieces of cloth (which are still used almost exclusively in the developing world) to high tech contraptions with cute names like bumGenius, FuzziBuns, Smartipants and Happy Heinys.  As a result of this market explosion, reusable diapers are making quite a comeback, but yet still in some places it is hard to find these products, even in stores exclusively dedicated to baby supplies. When is the last time you've seen a commercial for reusable diapers? The reality is that many people having babies today don't even consider reusable diapers as a choice, as if they simply don't know that there is one.