What a Waste

What a Waste to throw away 10s of billions of disposable diapers every year when reusable diapers will do a better job for less money. Our culture has begun to let go of throwaway drink bottles and throwaway plastic bags in favor of reusable bottles and reusable bags. We can’t keep buying products knowing that we will be throwing them away after only a short period of use.

Disposable products create waste, whether that waste is sent to a landfill for 1000 years, flushed and disposed of through wastewater treatment, or composted and disposed of as yard waste.

Reusable products do not create waste.

Cloth diapers use fewer resources in their manufacture, distribution, use, and disposal. As more people become aware of the need to reduce, reuse, and recycle, it is time to make the switch back to 100% reusable cloth diapers.

On a recent tour of the diaper service Nappy Ever After, Zero Waste Europe wrote a post summarizing the benefits of reusable cloth diapers. The service is run by Hilary Vick, who is also project manager of Real Nappies for London, which is the program that provides subsidies and vouchers for families to use in purchasing reusable cloth diapers.  These incentives are funded by the local authority or the waste authority in an effort to reduce pickup costs and waste in London landfills.

The tagline for Zero Waste Europe says it all: “If you are not for zero waste, how much waste are you for?“

This meme recently moved across the internet.

It conveys an important point – - families who use cloth diapers are more likely to choose reusable items in other areas as well. Cloth diapering allows children (and their families) to start off right on a lifetime of reuse.

Take 5 minutes to learn more about plastic pollution through the TED talk of Diana Cohen, a co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, an organization we support and are organizational members of.

We can stem the tide of pollution into oceans and landfills by choosing non-plastic, reusable alternatives to plastic products.

Have you wondered about bioplastics? Article by the Plastic Pollution Coalition’s Manuel Maqueda in the Earth Island Institute’s Earth Island Reports weighs what bioplastics may or may not mean.

The point, of course, is that reuse makes more sense than throwing away plastics no matter what the source of the materials. Throw away doesn’t mean go away.

“The Bioplastic Labyrinth”

I was reading about Thailand’s efforts to reduce the use of plastic bags, and I noticed that the Guardian UK has a page just for plastic bag waste.

Guardian UK photos of plastic bag waste

Now, I feel sick seeing trees covered in a thin film of plastic bags.  Bags don’t stay in a landfill.  Through gradual diffusion, they are spreading out across the land and the sea.  We’re suffocating ourselves.

That it has to come to such a state before there is outcry all around the world is sad, but at least there is a building outcry now.  The Guardian has collected all of their waste stories from one page.

Who suffers waste? It’s tempting to say that we all do, but the world’s poor suffer disproportionately from the waste that is dumped around them.

Today is No Plastic Day, to bring awareness to disposable plastic goods like bottles and bags. It’s time all of the plastic pollution warriors out there added plastic diapers to their list of nasty polluters and toxic waste issues.

Let’s make every day No Plastic Diapers Day. There are perfectly good reusable products that do a better job of catching baby waste.