Haste Really Does Make Waste (A Venting Session)

Yeah, that's a good point.  Unnecessary disposable products have become commonplace.  For a while I found myself using paper towels as dishes/napkins, but realized how wasteful I was being and stopped using them altogether.  I'm getting myself some cloth napkins now.

Disposable diapers in particular bug me because babies poop so often!  On Planet Green network they've got a show called Wasted, and for one of the episodes it showed how many disposable diapers a family with one baby was throwing out each week.  It was really gross.

On the one hand I understand that cloth diapers are difficult to deal with.  They're kind of gross, make you do the laundry frequently, maybe more difficult to apply and maybe less absorbant.  But disposables are so incredibly wasteful, I think if I were to have a kid I'd have to use cloth diapers.  I couldn't stand throwing out multiple disposable diapers every day.

We do live in a "disposable" society...it's really kind of amazing.  To add to that list, we have disposable plates, forks, spoons, cups, razors...and of course, a lot of other products are just designed to break forcing you to get a new one.  Or even worse...it doesn't break but marketing claims are so intense that you have to get the lastest and greatest. 

You might be interested in checking out the photography of Chris Jordan.  We have a few of his images in this thread.  It's really interesting to see a culture of waste in the form of images.

Disposables bug me too! We even stopped paper towels years ago and this year we got cloth napkins. They are so luxurius and so much better! I occasionally use disposable wipes when I travel, but that is a couple of times a year and I don't use that many to begin with, but when I am home there is no reason for that.

About the diapers, my neighbors use this diaper service called "mother nature" or something. They put the dirty cloth diapers (I assume rinsed) at their door once a week and they get a delivery of fresh ones. I thought it's a nice idea and takes some of the work off the mom...

this bugs me also. cloth really isn't any of those things any more. in the past that might have been true, but cloth options today, aside from the more laundry, which is maybe an extra load a month when you think about the fact that most cloth parents just add the diapers to existing loads of towels or whatever so the extra laundry would be accumulative and is not noticable imo. most cloth options are not different then what you do with disposable, you just toss it in the washer instead of the can. I have found they are more absorbant. a fact i was reminded of just a couple days ago.

my son is a really heavy wetter. i hate using disposables when we are on trips because he will leak through those in no time at all. the day before because we went to a funeral and stayed at a hotel and we went through so many diapers and outfits it was rediculous, and the diapers were the huggies overnights that i know work really well, he just is a very heavy wetter because he's like his daddy and drinks drinks drinks. so imo again disposables are less absorbant then cloth, not more.

I don't have a problem with disposables being used for convienence on trips or when you are out and about, but i don't see a need to use them all the time even at home. imo they should be used as the exception, not the rule but in our wasteful society they are the rule and cloth is the exception- people think parents that cloth diaper are crazy. it's so annoying to me when people look at me like i have 2 heads because i cloth diaper and they don't even know anything about it.

i'll stop now :)