Bottoming out; why are diaper services disappearing?

E: The Environmental Magazine, Sept-Oct, 1998 by Linda Baker

Solid waste concerns have already jump-started a return to cloth diapers in Europe. The cities of Vienna and Munich now subsidize the cost of cloth diapers to offset costs incurred by municipal waste disposal, says Rick Froese, a cloth diaper manufacturer and exporter in Ontario, Canada. Since it costs hundreds of dollars for the cities to dump each ton of waste, notes Froese, "they save on the order of two tons of waste in the landfill site for every child who uses cloth, instead of disposables."

Encouraged by figures showing that cloth diaper use in parts of Austria has gone from almost nothing to 40 percent in the last few years, several diaper service operators hope to set up similar programs in the U.S. In conjunction with several nonprofit organizations, Smithson's Baby Diaper Service in Seattle hopes to win a grant from Seattle Solid Waste to subsidize the cost of diaper service for low-income families. There is also some evidence that cloth diapers may be gaining favor with a new generation of parents. "For the first time in five years, our numbers are up," says Larry Martin, manager of Tidee Didee ill Portland. And according to NADS, a couple of diaper services in the Boston area may soon rise from the ashes.

Ultimately, however, like the triumph of formula over breast milk, the travails of diaper services reinforce the dominance of packaging, synthetics and big money in the baby care business. But eco-mommies and daddies shouldn't lose all hope. Ingenious entrepreneurs like Lyons Falls are already figuring out how to reclaim the fiber in used plastic diapers and make it into, of all things, recycled paper. CONTACT: National Association of Diaper Services, 994. Old Eagle School Road, Suite 1019, Wayne, PA 19087/(610)971-4850.