I’ve always been conscious of the environment.  I’ve made it a point to live as green as possible as long as it’s within a reasonable budget and it’s not too inconvenient.  My criteria may sound limiting but there’s actually a lot a person can do.   You don’t have to be a hippie tree hugger to save the environment. 

One of the things I do to contribute is to use reusable cloth diapers for my baby.  I’ve read that in the US alone 570 disposable diapers are thrown every second which amounts to 49 million a day, 18 Billion diapers a year.  Disposable diapers take forever to break down.  Some would argue that cloth diapers consume more water and energy because of the additional laundry load but I think the additional consumption in water and energy is better than tons of diapers in landfills.  Plus you can save energy if you air dry instead of using a dryer.

Modern cloth diapers are not cheap – the ones I bought at least.  (bumGenius 3.0 One-Size Cloth Diaper) There’s a pretty big initial investment but since it’s reusable and the ones I bought grow with baby, it should come out even, if not cheaper than disposables.  I initially bought 4 to try it out and bought another 12 after I realized that it’s not that difficult to use.  7 months after, I can say that I don’t regret it. 

One thing I learned from having a baby is that regardless of using a cloth or a disposable diaper, you need to change baby frequently to avoid diaper rash.  With disposable, some might wait for the diaper to be saturated before changing and that makes baby susceptible to diaper rash.

It’s almost as convenient as disposables. There’s no extra skill needed. 

But before you use cloth diapers let me tell you the little inconveniences it may come with.   It’s more hassle to go out using a cloth diaper because you wouldn’t want to carry around dirty diapers until you get home.  So whenever we go out, we switch to disposables.  After a few washes, cloth diapers may stink.  But this can easily be eliminated by soaking the inserts in a little bleach.  I know right? One advantage of cloth diapers is that it’s chemical free but the stripping instructions says to put bleach. 

Speaking of washing instructions, the official instructions says to wash in warm, then cold yada yada.  I have yet to find a washing machine in this side of the world that has a warm function.  So I just wash the diapers like any regular laundry – speedy soak mode. 

When it comes to leaks, I’ve experienced just as much leaks from disposables as from cloth diapers.  And if you’re from at least a middle income Filipino family that has a maid to do your laundry, then I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t go for cloth diapers.

Read more cloth vs disposables here.