Real Diaper Week Days 2&3

Happy Real Diaper Week, people! The great cloth diaper change will happen this Saturday, April 21st, in which we will attempt to break the Guinness Book record for the largest simultaneous cloth diaper change. Check to see if there is an event being hosted in your area (chances are good!) and join in the fun. Leading up to the big event this week, many bloggers are following the themes posted at the link above. 

I know I missed Day 2–sometimes I just can't blog every day. I'm a mom, ya know. Things come up. Yesterday's theme was real simple real diapers waste reduction, and today's is cost savings. The blog hop at the Eco Chic focused on environmental benefits yesterday and cost savings today. I did address some cost savings information on Monday by telling you how you can cloth diaper for free, so go read that. I was going to share some fun facts about the environmental and cost benefits to cloth today, but honestly, I think this information is already presented incredibly well by the Real Diaper Association. Why re-invent the wheel? So please follow this link, and read all about the benefits of cloth. I know most people don't follow links in blogs, but just do it this once. Go read it. It'll only take a couple minutes and will prove very enlightening. I can't copy the facts over here because they're copyrighted, so you've got to click.

I will tell you a couple of things just to pique your curiosity.

• Dioxin is the number one most toxic of all cancer-causing chemicals. Dioxin is found in disposable diapers. That's right–we put this chemical right up against our newborn babies' most sensitive areas. It is illegal in most other countries, but here in the USA, there aren't any restrictions on its usage.
• It takes over twice as much water to manufacture disposable diapers as it does to wash cloth ones.
• Regardless of what type of diaper is being used, feces is supposed to go in the toilet. Over 99% of disposable diaper users do not follow this rule, which leads to contamination of groundwater and outbreaks of e coli. There's a reason we don't poop in the trash can.
• Kids go through 5,000 diaper changes in the first 20 months of life (at 8 changes/day avg). Here is what 5,000 diapers looks like. You could at least double this for the typical usage of the average American baby, as potty training is rarely completed by 40 months.