Category — Environment

Lately, I’ve been playing a bit with natural disinfectants because chemicals in regular disinfectants scare the heck out of me.  Ever since the birth of my daughter, I’ve been cautious with the use of chemicals, but once she started crawling and putting everything in her mouth, I became almost obsessed with what’s in my household cleaners and disinfectants.

I’ve known for a while that tea tree oil can be used for disinfecting and I’ve been using it on cloth diapers for a few months now.  It’s worked very well for us when we had problems with yeast diaper rashes.  I’ve also used tea tree oil on skin blemishes and insect bites.

Tea tree oil has a very strong smell, so be prepared for that if you decide to buy it and have never used it before.  The smell does not last a long time though and if you use it to disinfect diapers, don’t worry, they won’t smell like tea tree oil after rinsing and drying.

More recently, I’ve started using eucalyptus oil from Wildroot Botanicals mixed with a natural cleaner for cleaning and disinfecting kitchen counters.  The smell of eucalyptus oil will definitely wake you up and clear your sinuses.  If you cloth diaper, you can also use the oil in the diaper wash.

Both oils – tea tree and eucalyptus – are quite expensive, especially eucalyptus.  However, they’re usually used in very small amounts so they last quite a while.  As for availability, tea tree oil can be found in quite a few stores.  I’ve bought tea tree oil at Costco and Zehrs (a Loblaws-owned supermarket store).  Eucalyptus oil is harder to find.  I would love to be able to buy it close to home in larger bottles.

Lately, I’ve been asked a lot about PC Green Diapers.  These diapers are still relatively new and there isn’t a huge lot of information about them online.  So, I decided to tell you everything I know about them.

As I’ve written in a previous post, PC Green disposable diapers are chlorine and fragrance free.  Those of you who have had trouble finding other eco disposable diapers close to home, might have better luck finding these since PC Green diapers might be available in your supermarket store (owned by Loblaws).

What I do like about this diaper:

• Very stretchy tabs.  None of the other eco disposable diapers I’ve tried have tabs that stretchy.
• The diaper is quite a bit cheaper than other “green” diapers.  The regular price of PC Green diapers is $15.99 for 46 diapers in size 4.  Seventh Generation diapers are $17.99-19.99 for 30 diapers in the same size.  Also, you can sometimes see the PC Green diapers on special for $12.99.
• No rashes so far.  It does not promote healing of rashes very well though.  I found that bamboo cloth diapers with wool covers at night promote healing much better than the PC Green diapers even though cloth diapers get quite wet overnight.  I guess it’s not a surprise since cloth diapers do allow more airflow.  Also, bamboo is antimicrobial.

What I do NOT like about this diaper:

• SAP (Super Absorbent Polymer)
• Still has some plastics in it however, according to the manufacturer some of the plastic components were replaced with “revolutionary plant-based polymers”.
• Packaging is not biodegradable.
• It’s still a disposable that takes hundreds of years to decompose.  One of the few reasons why I don’t use disposables is that the thought of mountains of disposable diapers in the landfill really bothers me.
• I wasn’t impressed with what’s written about cloth diapers at the back of the packaging.  It might mislead people into believing that cloth diapers are made from pesticide sprayed cotton ONLY.  Trust me there’s LOTS of diapers out there (including my daughter’s) that are not.  I also wasn’t impressed with the mention of detergent as if tons of it were being used on diapers.  The truth is, most people use only 1/4 of the recommended amount of detergent to wash their diapers.  Also, a lot of people these days use front-loading washers which use quite a bit less water.

NOTE: These diapers do fit a bit bigger than SG diapers, so if you’re using SG diapers and your baby is almost outgrowing a size, PC Green diapers in the same size might still fit her/him well.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.  Just please keep in mind that I’m not an expert on disposable diapers – I normally cloth diaper only.

As promised, here is the second part of “Eco-Friendly Disposable Diapers”.

3. gDiapers

When I first heard about gDiapers, I was very excited.  A diaper could be used as a disposable and a cloth diaper?  I simply had to have this diaper!

The diaper consists of a washable cotton little gPant (i.e. a cotton cover), a snap-in nylon liner and a plastic free gRefill or washable gCloth.  Besides the washable inserts that gDiapers makes, there are lots of WAHMs (Work at Home Moms) who make them as well in different shapes and sizes, and using different fabrics.

Unfortunately, my love with gDiapers was short lived.  I found that the inside snaps left marks on my baby’s skin.  I never used these for night-time since I didn’t think they’d be comfortable enough for that.  I wouldn’t want to wear something like that at night, so why would I put it on my baby?  I know a lot of parents out there do love these diapers for daytime AND night-time.   I suspect I’m just more picky than the average parent.  I think I’ve been spoiled by comfortable, soft and fluffy cloth diapers :-)

4. Seventh Generation

A lot of you have probably seen this light brown diaper.  In the past year or so, the popularity of Seventh Generation diapers has exploded.  I’ve seen it worn on a lot of babies, including celebrity babies.

The diaper is chlorine, fragrance and latex free.  It is NOT plastic free and it is NOT compostable.  I couldn’t believe that some people online say it’s “biodegradable”.  It’s not.  And please do NOT flush this diaper down the toilet.  I actually read somewhere that the diaper is flushable hahahaha.

What I did NOT like about this diaper:

• More SAP than Nature Babycare diapers
• Plastic instead of corn-based material
• VERY wide tabs which left marks on my baby’s legs
• Smaller than other disposable diapers in that size range.  My 30 lbs daughter is not going to be able to fit into size 4 for much longer, and the size 4 diaper is supposed to fit up to 37 lbs.

NOTE: The brown colour of this diaper is not naturally occurring.  The colour comes from the addition of pigments.

5. PC GREEN Disposable Diaper

Just like Seventh Generation (SG) diapers, the PC GREEN diapers are chlorine and fragrance free.  I found this diaper in a supermarket store, the same one that sells SG diapers.

What I liked about this diaper:

• VERY stretchy tabs.  None of the other eco-friendly diapers are like that.
• The diaper is quite a bit cheaper than other “green” diapers.  One PC GREEN diaper costs almost half as much as a Seventh Generation diaper.

What I did NOT like about this diaper:

• SAP
• Still has some plastic in it however, according to the manufacturer some of the plastic components were replaced with “revolutionary plant-based polymers.”

I must admit I like these diapers a lot more than SG diapers because of the stretchiness and better fit.

CONCLUSION:

None of the diapers I discussed in the two posts are perfect.  They still create huge amounts of waste whether compostable or not.  Also, none of the disposables seem comfortable enough.  I agree they’re a little thinner than my Northern Baby AIO (All-in-one) or AI2 (All-in-two) diapers, but they’re much less comfortable and not very healthy for my toddler.

NOTE: I recently found a great post about “green” disposable diapers.  I’ve never seen a mom do so much research on the subject as the author of the post you can find here.  After reading it, I was glad we haven’t been using disposables on a daily basis.

For those of you who don’t know, I use cloth diapers.  I make them as well :-)  When nothing goes wrong, I use them 100% of the time.  A handful of times I’ve had to deal with detergent residue thanks to switching detergents and/or using different washers.  I usually know it’s a detergent residue issue because our sensitive monkey gets a diaper rash.  Normally, she does not get one with cloth diapers, so I know what’s wrong immediately.

We recently moved and had no washer for 5 weeks.  During that time, I hand washed the diapers 3 times, my mom washed some in her washer a couple of times, and I went to the laundromat once.  The visit to the laundromat did not end well since my daughter ended up having a rash.  I suspect it was detergent or fabric softener residue in the washer from previous users.  So, whenever I need to re-wash the diapers, my daughter wears disposables (which isn’t very frequently).  Because I worry about what’s in disposables, I usually go with the “eco-friendly” ones.  Over the next couple of posts, I will write about the following disposable diapers:

• Nature Babycare
• Moltex OKO
• gDiapers
• Seventh Generation
• PC GREEN

1. Nature Babycare

This Swedish award-winning diaper is said to be more breathable because of a corn-based biodegradable outer film.  The Nature Babycare diaper and packaging are chlorine free and are potentially compostable (however you need specific conditions for that to occur).  The diaper does contain some SAP (Super Absorbent Polymer), but less than other disposables because of a unique, patented channel construction.

I chose this diaper because it has corn-based materials rather than plastic.  I’m also cautious about SAP, so the less of it, the better.  I do wish the diaper was a little softer on the outside and that the tabs could stick to anywhere on the diaper, but these are not major issues.

We only had one leak with this diaper and I think it might have been because the diaper has been getting a bit small.

2. Moltex OKO

Another compostable diaper made with corn-based material.  This one is made in Germany.  I only used one Moltex diaper which I received in a free trial pack.  The first thing I noticed was how much softer the diaper was as compared to the Nature Babycare diaper.  The diaper also seemed a little bigger, but it fit my daughter very well leaving no gaps.  She wore this sample diaper overnight and we had no leaks even though the diaper was quite heavy in the morning.

The one thing that I don’t like about this disposable is that it seems to have more SAP than Northern Babycare.

In part 2 of “Eco-Friendly Disposable Diapers”: My experience with gDiapers, Seventh Generation and PC GREEN diapers.