The straight poop on disposable diapers, from cloth alternatives to a recyclable future

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The memory of a maternity ward nurse showing me how to wrap a tiny diaper around my newborn daughter seems almost laughable to me now. It seemed such anintimidating task.

Fast forward two years, and I feel as though I have gone through those motions thousands of times.

In fact, I have. If one baby averages five diaper changes a day, that's 1,825 changes a year, and 4,563 changes by the time they reach 2years old and are (fingers crossed) in the throes of toilet training.

Multiply 1,825 changes each year by all the babies and toddlers out there, and the result is a soggy, stinky mountain of diapers.

"The volume is fantastic," says Joe Schwarcz, a professor of chemistry and director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society.

"We're disposing something like 30 to 40 billion diapers every year into landfills in North America. That's a huge amount of diapers."

It's also a huge problem for a society coming to terms with its single-use plastic dependency.

The bad news? Babies haven't stopped pooping. The good news? Adults haven't stopped innovating.

The diaper breakdown

Disposable diapers have come a long way since they were first invented in the late 1940s, andthe modern-day product is "actually quite an interesting and complex concoction," said Schwarcz.

Its outer layer is typically a plastic polypropylene or polyethylene while its inner layers often contain an absorbent fibre derived from wood pulp. But the real star of the show, according to Schwarcz, is what's mixed in withthat fibre:a polymer called sodium polyacrylate, "which just has an amazing ability to absorb moisture."

Exact formulations of these plastics and polymers are tightly guarded trade secrets in a competitive and lucrative industry, but they share a common fate: once disposablesare sent to the landfill, they stay there.

"In theory, there are biodegradableparts [of diapers]," said Schwarcz. "But the fact isthat biodegradation takes place only under perfect conditions, not in a landfill."

Building a better diaper

To thediaper industry's credit, companies have worked to reduce the amount of non-perishable material they use.

One study conducted by Procter & Gamble, the makers of Pampers, but verified by what they called "external experts" statedthat the company's average American diaperin2010 weighed 45 per cent less than its 1992 version.

But thatsame study found innovation slowed from 2007 onward, saying "it is hard to make a small diaper smaller."

For all their efforts to reduce their products' environmental footprints, the Pampers study and others concluded the majority of a disposable's environmental footprint comes from its creationrather than its landfillafterlife, as is commonly believed.

"Used diaper waste causes caregivers concern because they see much of it," stated the Pampers study.

Disposables 'a kick in the teeth'

That's a concern Heather Osmondcan relate to.

Thecost savings initially attracted the Corner Brook, N.L., momand her husband to try cloth diapering their son Nolan, after using disposables when he was born and realizing the legacy thatwould leave behind.

"My child's diapers would literally be here longer than my great-great-grandchildren," said Osmond. "It was almost a kick in the teethto realize how long our garbage was going to be sitting around."

Osmond threw herself into reusables,using them exclusively until Nolanwas fully toilet trained at around 3years old.

"His diapersthat started at the very, very beginning with him being 10 weeks oldlasted him right up until potty training. That was amazing," she said.

Cloth prosand cons

Osmonddiverted thousands of diapers from landfill.

Elsewhere in Canada there are efforts to promotereusables: several Quebec municipalities now offer cloth diaper subsidies, aimingto win over more parents.

• Cloth-diaper subsidy coming this fall for CDN-NDG residents

But that doesn't mean cloth isthe clear environmental winner overall in the diaper debate.

Cotton, the most popular source material for cloth diapers,requiresimmense amounts of water and chemicals to produce. Schwarcz estimated cotton soaks up 25 per cent of the world's insecticide usedespite being grown on just three per cent of its arable land.

Thenthere is the laundry issue. It can take a lot to get a cloth diaper clean hot water cycles, sometimes in duplicate for the heaviest soiled loads not to mention the amount of time the absorbent pads require in a dryer.

One exhaustive studyby the British government considered all those concernsand concluded thatdisposables diapers (or nappies, in British parlance) beat out cloth by a hair.

But that conclusion comes with a big asterisk.

"It is consumers' behaviour after purchase that determines most of the impacts from reusable nappies," the study stated, adding cloth can trump disposables if they are washed in water temperature at60 C or less, are air driedand are used on a second child.

Schwarcz said by laundering mindfully, cloth beats disposable, "but it's not a landslide victory."

"If I were to put all of this together, my answer would be to use the cloth at home and disposables when travelling."

Compost and recycling

But there is another way,one Schwarczsees as better suited to the hygienicstandards required in daycare centres and nursing homes: recycling disposables.

The industry is in its infancy in Canada, but the City of Toronto has been turning parts of disposable diapers into compost since 2002.

Dirty disposables are collected curbside with other organic wasteand brought to a processing facility, where all the organics are put into "basically a giant washing machine," said Nadine Kerr, a manager with the city's solid waste management services.

That washing machine separates plastics from organics;the plastics floatto the top and are raked off thensent to landfill, while the organic materials including baby poop are sent on to anaerobic digesters,which create compost.

Eachyear, the city's facilities which Kerr confirmed "definitely" smell insideprocess 12,000 tonnes of baby and adult diapers, along with used menstrual products.

"The idea was to get as much diverted from landfill as we could," said Kerr.

Toronto may be doing more with disposables than most other Canadian municipalities although check out these Calgary dads offering a similar service but some overseas innovatorsare taking it a notch further.

Private companies in the U.K., like Knowasteand NappiCycle, now recycleall parts of disposables, even the plastics.

"Certainly it's doable," said Schwarcz. "The question is whether or not it is economically feasible."

But as Canadian demographics continue to skew older, Schwarcz said that economic question may soon become moot.

"There is a driving force for thisbecause, of course the, population is increasing, especially the older population and they use a lot of these incontinence products," he said.

"The best thing would be if theserecycling facilitiesbecome commonplace."

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