Andromeda's Attic

Why Use Cloth?

1 child potty trained by 2.5 will go through roughly 5,000 disposable diapers. At $.20-$.25 per diaper, that's $1000 - $1200 per child.
A full "stash" from newborn through potty training costs between $200-$600, depending on the system you use. Plus, you can reuse the diapers from one child to another.
If you have 2 children and start cloth diapering right away, you will save more than $1500.
The total cost of energy/water/cleansing material for cloth diapering is approximately $.08 per day, or $.56 per week.

It takes 80,000 tons of plastic and over 200,000 trees to diaper the babies in America for one year.
75% of a disposable diaper never decomposes in landfills and the 25% that does decompose takes more than 100 years to do so.
The energy and water used per week to wash cloth diapers at home is equal to 2 toilet flushes per day that week.
Disposable diapers instruct parents to empty solid waste into the toilet before disposing of the diaper, yet only .5% of households do so. So instead of safely running through the sewage system, 99.5% of the solid waste from diapers ends up in our landfills.

Disposable diapers contain the following toxins:

Dioxin -- a toxic by-product of the paper-bleaching process. It is a carcinogen listed by the EPA as the most toxic of all cancer-linked chemicals. It is banned in most countries, not including the US.
Tributyl-tin (TBT) -- a pollutant.
Sodium polyacrylate -- a super-absorbent polymer (SAP) that turns to gel when wet (the heavy stuff in a wet diaper). It has been linked to toxic shock syndrome (TSS).