The Choice

Cloth Diaper rabid advocates got mad and cried all over the place when Pampers published a claim attacking them, saying that there was no ecological difference from one to the other and that kids in their diapers lived in a wonderland in which they pooped in recycled material that used hardly any water to be created and was going to biodegrade maybe in 350 years instead of the dreadful 500 that their counterparts proclaimed.

That post quickly disappeared from the American website, but not from the British one. I didn't find it offensive, they attack something that they don't know and take them as if they were flats with rubber pants and the methods for washing would require boiling them and raising them over and over and over.

At the same rate, advocates for cloth attack the big corporations making the assumption that you will change a diaper some 15 times a day and will buy weekly the most expensive brand there is, so I don't really know why they get so offended.

Reality meets somewhere in the middle, I was lucky enough to spend $30 for an 8 week supply of pull-ups some 4 months ago (just before Tiny Guy was born), and before that I had gotten some other deals. I never just went to the store to buy whatever I could find. I searched online, hunted sales, joined online stores, etc. Always trying to bring the cost down. I was very successful on some occasions.

But when we make the "cloth" choice, then we have to keep making more and more choices, natural or synthetic  tumble or line dry, CD specific (an expensive) or general detergent, 12,24 or 36, prefolds, pockets or AIOs.

 I remember a joke about a man that wonders if taking a cab or a bus, and the 2 possibilities of sitting or standing inside the bus keep having 2 more possibilities with one of the picks again and again, and he gets so overwhelmed that he just decides to take a cab.

Big diapering companies claim that 95% of parents "choose" disposables. I tend to disagree, I would say 5% choose cloth, and a large percentage of the other 95 doesn't know that cloth exists. They take disposables for granted, ignoring their possibilities.

The question is if they ignore them because they want to or because really nobody has told them. But, in any case, if they go that route, the conventional one, they are free of making decisions, they are set to a standard of quality, performance and environmental impact. They don't want to be overwhelmed with possibilities, they just take the cab.

So, don't be judgmental, don't overwhelm people and don't get offended by their claims. You choose what you think is the best, and just because it was what you decided, it is correct.  We are polluting the planet anyway.