Mothering Magazine articles to read

I found, thanks to Go Go Natural's Facebook posts, some articles at Mothering Magazine's website that give information about the environmental impact of cloth versus disposable diapers, as well as some really interesting articles about the timeline of the war between the two types.  Unfortunately, I didn't see where the information came from, but I'm sure if I dig deeper I can find it.  I do wish they had their sources clearly displayed, however.  It would certainly make them more credible to people who think disposables are "environmentally friendly". 

Here are a few of the articles:

http://www.mothering.com/a-tale-of-two-diapers

This one is about the ongoing battle between disposable diaper manufacturers and cloth diaper advocates, including an explanation of how consumers were misled, confused, and trained to believe that disposables are environmentally friendly.
Here is a quote from the article, "According to the American Petroleum Institute, 3.5 billion gallons of oil were used to produce the 18 million throwaway diapers that Lehrburger studied in 1991. Approximately 7 billion gallons of oil each year are required to feed our disposable-diaper habit today, almost four times as much oil as is estimated to be in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

http://mothering.com/green-living/diaper-choices

This is by far my favorite one.  It gives a lot of statistics about the manufacture and disposal (if you can call it that) of disposable diapers.  Again, I wish sources were more available, but I'm sure, as I said before, research could find them.  And probably a letter to the editor of the magazine would do as well.  Here are some of these statistics:

• Eighteen billion disposable diapers are placed in landfills each year. They take as long as 500 years to decompose.
• Disposable diapers make up the third-largest source of solid waste in landfills, after newspapers and food/beverage containers.
• It takes more than 82,000 tons of plastic and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp (a quarter of a million tress) to manufacture the disposables that cover all the babies in the United States right now.
• The wastewater produced from washing diapers is benign, while the wastewater from the manufacture of the pulp, paper, and plastics used in disposable diapers is toxic, containing dioxins, solvents, sludge, and heavy metals.
• The Landbank Report, an independent review and evaluation done by a London environmental agency, concluded that compared with cloth diapers, throwaway diapers use 20 times more raw materials, three times more energy, two times more water, and generate 60 times more waste (The Landbank Consultancy Limited, “A Review of Proctor & Gamble’s Environmental Balances for Disposable and Re-usable Nappies,” July 1991). 

Reading these statistics really makes me sick.  It's just disgusting.  And it upsets me to hear people say that cloth is just too hard, or their husbands won't give it a chance, so they don't insist.

http://mothering.com/green-living/politics-diapers

This article chronicles the war between the disposable industry and cloth industry.  One of these articles, I admit I can't remember which one, mentions that there are areas of the country that no longer have diaper services.  Well, I can tell you I LIVE IN ONE.  The closest one is in a city that's at least 3 hours away.




I hope that when people read this blog, or Go Go Natural's Facebook posts, or the articles I've linked above, that they will do their best to spread the word.  Don't be afraid to tell people how NASTY disposable diapers really are.  Let's start making people think instead of just blindly follow the whims of the disposable diaper industry like a bunch of lemmings.

Thanks to Go Go Natural (http://www.gogonatural.com/) for pointing out these articles to me and others!