That is eye opening!

It's a good thing to know how long it takes a product to decompose, as it helps us in choosing what we buy, but there's so much more to it. The manufacturing of these products have impact as well, as do the alternatives. For example, the diapers. . .when I had my daughter, there happened to be a number of articles that came out about the different choices, including cost (which was a biggie for me at the time.) Cloth diapers, provided by and cleaned by a service, was economical, but many companies disposed of the waste in waterways and used chemicals for cleaning that were very dangerous. Home cleaning was OK, except that doing more, smaller washloads in hot water was creating pollution in the form of energy and water use, as well as putting more washing chemicals into the water table. Plastic diapers actually created less waste and pollution in their manufacture than cloth, even with the re-useability of cloth, so the impact of the manufacturing process changed the balance of the end impact.

One article presented a very practical conclusion: if you're in an area where the water table is fragile or water consumption has to be limited frequently, cloth diapers (whether laundered at home or commercially) is the less desirable choice. If, on the other hand, landfill space is limited and trash transport pollutes (trucks sometimes carry trash many miles on a daily basis, and some areas dump trash into the ocean), you should choose cloth over disposable diapers.

BTW, in the end (ha!) it was my daughter's fragile little behind that made the choice. I had cloth diapers from my best friend, whose daughter was three years older than mine, but even with the most careful cleaning, they were too rough on her. She got her mommy's skin, poor thing. Had to go disposable.

Obviously, we want to buy things with as little packaging as possible, and recycle or re-use anything we can, but we need to remember that some plastics create less pollution than glass or aluminum in manufacture, and some recycling centers create toxic waste in processing our recyclables. It's a bigger picture than just the decomposition!

Wow is right! Thanks for the great info. I have been trying to learn more about this.

Hagn,

Leonda

thats great information,makes you think, people should go back to cloth diapers yea right tell that to the younger generation. Barb

Who would of thunk that! Thanks Kary!

Thanks for all that information. That is hard to believe how long it takes things to decompose.

Holy cow!  It's hard to conceive that a diaper will last longer than I will.  LOL