The disposable diaper myth

Whole Earth Review, Fall, 1988 by Carl Lehrburger, Rachel Snyder

AN ENTIRE GENERATION is growing up believing that the term "disposable diaper" is redundant: There's only one thing you put on babies' bottoms. They're plastic, you get them in huge bags and boxes at the grocery store or the convenience store, and you fold them up and toss them in the trash when they're dirty. The product name itself is a misnomer, testament to the power of Madison Avenue and to our own Freudian neuroses surrounding our bodies and our wastes. For Huggies and Pampers and Luvs are not "disposable" at all. We throw about 18 billion of them away each year into trash cans and bags, believing they've gone to some magic place where they will safely disappear. The truth is, most of the plastic-lined "disposables" end up in landfills. There they sit, tightly wrapped bundles of urine and feces that partially and slowly decompose only over many decades. What started out as a marketer's dream of drier, happier, more comfortable babies has become a solid-waste nightmare of squandered material resources, skyrocketing economics, and a growing health hazard, set against the backdrop of dwindling landfill capacity in a country driven by consumption.

The mythology surrounding contemporary diapering is a direct descendant of the modern-day waste ethic, whose roots are generally seen as economic. With profits based on sales, manufacturers have a built-in incentive to foster planned obsolescence. And so it is with diapers. The pur and honorable cotton diaper represents approximately 10 percent of the U.S. diaper market even though it has a viable life of 80 to 200 uses. Capturing the other 90 percent of market share is, of course, the single-use, throw-away diaper.

The sheer numbers of diapers being bought, used, and disposed of in our trash are mind-boggling. Industry statistics indicate that as many as 18 billion disposable diapers will be used in the U.S. this year' - the end products of a market valued at more than $3 billion. Chalk up more than half of that market to Proctor & Gamble, maker of Pampers and Luvs; 30 percent to KimberleyClark's Huggies; and the rest to various generic or "house" brands. It's easy to see how the numbers add up. In the midst of a baby boomers' baby boom, 98 percent of all households using diapers use some disposables. And, as many parents know, a child can run through 8,000 to 10,000 diapers before becoming fully toilet trained. 2

The forerunner to today's single-use diaper dates back to materials-scarce Sweden after World War II, where a two-piece diaper with a throw-away paper liner was designed. Not until decades later did U.S. industry introduce a single-use diaper this, too, with an inner absorbent liner designed to be torn out and flushed down the toilet.' Subsequent U.S. products combined the outer plastic portion and inner absorbent liner in a design that is at the root of many of today's diaper-disposal headaches.

Today's new and improved single-use diaper is made of an outer layer of waterproof polyethylene plastic. Sandwiched between the plastic and a water-repellent liner is a thick layer of an absorbent, cotton-like material made from wood pulp. A super-absorbent polymer that turns to gel when the baby urinates is embedded into the wood pulp of most U.S. single-use diapers. Once they are used, roughly 90 percent to 95 percent of the 18 billion feces- and urine-filled disposable diapers enter the household trash stream and ultimately end up in landfills,[4] creating an immediate public health hazard. Leachate containing viruses from human feces (including live vaccines from routine childhood immunizations) can leak into the earth and pollute underground water supplies.[6] In addition to the potential of groundwater contamination, airborne viruses carried by flies and other insects contribute to an unhealthy and unsanitary situation. These viruses could include Hepatitus A, Norwalk and Rota Virus.'

Although modern, single-use diaper packaging recommends rinsing feces in the toilet, this is impractical and is in fact discouraged by the onepiece diaper design, which does not allow the diaper to be torn apart easily. In addition, rinsing the tremendously absorptive, single-use diaper in the toilet produces a very full, very heavy, very wet diaper. For these and other reasons, it is doubtful that any more than 10 percent of parents actually rinse out single-use diapers as a matter of course.

This unsanitary practice of commingling untreated sewage and solid waste in landfills - of dumping raw sewage directly into the environment should raise eyebrows among more than those whose job it is to oversee the public health. Material waste is yet another consequence of reliance on single-use diapers. From the time a single-use diaper is put on a baby, it may have a useful life of a few hours at most. Since there is no other application of the single-use diaper, use of this product in the U.S. alone wastes nearly 100,000 tons of plastic' and 800,000 tons of pulp derived from trees.[9]