The Danger of Disposable Diapers
And our Role as Caregiver in the Eco-System
When is the right age potty training age? The answer depends on you, your goals, and the characteristics of your child. But many parents worry that early training can be harmful. They’ve heard potty “experts” warn that early training causes behavioural problems or personality disorders.
So why not wait 2–3 years, like the average American does, to potty-train your child? A simple answer would be: You don’t want to sit in a diaper full of faeces, why force babies to do so? Not only longlasting effects regarding your child’s development determine the answer, but a problem people leave behind in their trashcan without looking back, creating a worldwide catastrophe.
Around 20 billion disposable diapers are added to landfills in the United States alone every year, creating about 3.5 million tons of waste. According to a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, disposable diapers introduce pathogens into the environment from the solid waste they contain.
“While the effects of these pathogens are still being studied, experts agree that pathogens could make their way into a water source, potentially polluting drinking water.”
PR Newswire from New York stated studies, indicating that diapers in landfills take up to 500 years to degrade, creating methane and other toxic gasses in the process, and their manufacture uses volatile chemicals that also end up in the eco-system.
A child uses around 8–10 diapers a day in the first months and 6–7 in the following. So your baby has used around 7.000 disposable diapers before even making its first conscious choice.
It may be worth to have another look over your shoulder and see what actually happens to the tons of waste created everywhere. And that doesn't even include the estimated 200,000 trees, lost each year to make disposable diapers for babies in the U.S. alone.
Disposable Diapers not only cost our planet but also burn a big hole in your wallet. If you use disposables and disposable wipes, “it will cost you at least $3,000 per child!”, as stated by the smallfootprintfamily.
So what CAN we do? How can we ensure a healthy planet for our child's future and what alternatives to disposable diapers are there? A recent study in Melbourne, Australia showed that cloth-diapers seem to come back in fashion. Read about my research on cloth-diapers in my following articles and if they are really the answer to all our questions.
Thanks for taking the time to read my article and thank you for trying to make our world a little bit better. Let me know what you think and contact me on Facebook @ Potty Secrets or on Instagram @ Pottysecrets / Julia Weiss.
