Diaper Service: Environmental Benefits
The Facts
- It takes a cup full of crude oil - a non-renewable resource - to produce the plastic for just one disposable diaper. It may say "cotton like" on the packet, but in fact it is nearly 100% extruded plastic.
- Disposable diapers require wood pulp in their production. Tree farmers operate monoculture plantations, which have detrimental environmental consequences and are usually heavily treated with pesticides.
- 4.5 (four and a half) trees per baby are used to make the wood pulp used in disposable diapers - the UK (United Kingdom) uses 7 million trees per year for the paper in disposable diapers.
- No studies have yet been done to quantify the cost of distributing disposable diapers to retailers.
- It takes as much energy to make one disposable diaper as it does to wash a real diaper 200 times.
- 80 tons of disposable diapers are thrown away every hour in the UK. These are taken to landfill sites where it will take 500 years to decompose.
- 9,000,000 disposable diapers are used every day in the UK. It costs taxpayers £40 million a year to deal with their disposal.
Reuse is always better than single use! For more information about the environmental impact of disposable diapers, check out the REAL DIAPER ASSOCIATION - Diaper Facts.
