Part 1: why diaper service?

With Earth Day approaching, it seems prudent to talk about something "green".  Something we can do every day with a little bit of effort, the best kind of green things if you ask me.  Although I admire those who live their lives wholly for the earth, I believe in the little things.  

I believe that every piece of garbage in a pocket instead of on the ground is worthwhile, every can recycled instead of sent to the landfill is a little victory and every useless receipt recycled is ultimately a tree; they all matter.  Cumulatively we are making a difference, we can make a difference.

OK - enough.  I am passionate about the Earth, always have been.  What I really want to write about is one of the things we decided to do green-er when we had a baby.  Of course I wanted to use cloth babies for our newborn child, my husband on the other hand, well he tried to tell me they cloth was "not and option", I just about laughed in his face.  

There were many reasons that I wanted to go with cloth, The New & Green Baby Co sums up a lot of great environmental arguments.  My husband didn't want poop in the washing machine.  What won him over was a fact in an e-course from New & Green; "Each disposable diaper requires 1 cup of crude oil to manufacture the plastic."  That's right, 1 cup of the earths oil for each diaper your baby pees in.  My husbands no poop in the washing machine argument was getting pretty weak.

As a compromise, I suggested diaper service.  We could get all the benefits of cloth without sorting, rinsing, washing and touching (mostly touching) dirty diapers every couple days.  Fresh diapers are delivered every week and the new ones are taken away, poops and all.  Not to mention lower incidence of diaper rash and quicker potty training when the time comes.  Now my husband was interested, I could see he was warming up to the idea.  Plus I think he knew he wasn't going to win this particular battle.

We chose to go with Happy Nappy a Canadian company with offices in BC, Alberta and Ontario.  It's a franchise company and I've truly enjoyed getting to know our lower mainland team, based out of Langley BC. 


I want to assure those of you who are stuck in the same place as we were, it is worth the effort to look into diaper service, if you can find one with a good environmental mandate, including their laundering process, you may just find your solution.  And remember, you don't have to use cloth all the time if you don't want to, I have friends on the service that prefer the east of disposables when they go out.  Remember every little bit counts and its worth your effort. 

Good luck going green, and kudos to you for everything you do.

Make sure you read Part 2:Happy Nappy Cloth Diaper Service.