Pros and cons of cloth diapers: The awesome & the not so awesome

I love cloth diapers and cloth diapering, but I totally know that cloth diapers are not perfect and that they are not the solution to all problems, but I do think that the pros out way the cons.

Cloth diapers save money, reduce waste, and contain less chemicals, but cloth diapers must be washed, they have a larger upfront cost and they do have a learning curve.

Pros of cloth diapering

• Saves energy
• Alleviates the stress of finding money to buy disposables
• Knowing your baby will have diapers even in a grid down situation
• Biodegrades faster than disposables
• Reduces waste to landfill by 99%
• Reduces risk of ground water contamination
• Reduces demand for fossil fuels
• No harsh chemicals and carcinogens
• Can adjust size to fit baby

Cloth diapers save energy

A very common argument against cloth diapers is that when you wash them all the water and electric (also natural gas if you have a gas water heater) you use actually makes them more harmful to the environment.

While I do understand how it could seem that way, cloth diapers actually use less than half the amount of water used in making disposable diapers.

If you want to learn more about cloth diapers and the environment, check out my article “Are cloth diapers actually better for the environment?”

Cloth diapers reduce financial stress

On average you will spend $50-$70 per child, per month on disposable diapers, that doesn’t include wipes, diaper cream or taxes etc.

With cloth diapers there is typically a $150-$300 one-time cost to buy your cloth diapers and then you would have the recuring cost of detergent and utilities which typically amounts to less than $5 a month.

If you want to learn more about the cost of cloth diapering check out my article ” How much are cloth diapers? Some numbers you should know”

Knowing your baby will always have diapers

Blizzards, floods, ice storms, supply chain issues, financial changes, or you need diapers but it’s black Friday and if you go anywhere near Walmart you’ll get trampled (unlikely but I honestly wouldn’t rule it out).

These are all potential issues in regard to getting somewhere to buy disposable diapers.

Now with cloth diapers you do have to buy detergent, it’s much easier to buy several months’ worth of detergent than it is to buy several months’ worth of disposable diapers.

I wash a large load of cloth diapers every day, I use Gain original powder, and in total for both the prewash and main wash combined I use about line 2 of detergent.

So that’s line 2 of Gain powder every day, if I’m just using the Gain for diapers, a 91oz (80 load) box will last me about 2 1/2-3 months.

If I’m using the Gain for clothes and other regular laundry, I go through that same 91oz box every month.

I buy my detergent from Buehler’s which is my local grocery store where Gain original powder is $15.99 for a 91oz box, but I typically buy it when the store releases a $2.00 off coupon, which happens every few months.

This means I am usually buying the Gain for $13.99, so I can wash cloth diapers for about 3 months for $14.00 (would actually be a little more with tax).

I have 3 kids in cloth diapers full time, so if I was using disposables at $50 per child, per month that’s $150 per month.

So, in order to buy 3 months’ worth of disposable diapers, that would be $450 for 3 kids for 3 months, that is not including wipes, diaper cream, taxes ect.

Now, if you compare the 2 …..

Cloth diapers 3 months	Disposable diapers 3 months
$14.00	$450.00

I do understand that most people probably don’t have 3 kids in diapers at the same time, so they wouldn’t be spending $450 on disposables in 3 months unless they were buying a more expensive brand.

However, having less kids in cloth diapers means fewer diapers to wash, and therefore you would be using less detergent and less utilities.

So, I personally feel that budgeting for $15.00-$20.00 dollars every 3 months is a lot easier that budgeting for $450.00 every 3 months.

And all you have to do to get a whole new set of clean cloth diapers is to wash them!

If you don’t have a washing machine you can even hand wash them with a bucket and a clean plunger (don’t get all grossed out, it’s actually really easy)

Cloth diapers biodegrade faster than disposables

The vast majority of the materials used to make cloth diapers are natural fiber fabrics, so basically, they took a plant (like cotton or hemp) washed it, spun it into a thread and then wove it into a fabric.

Therefore, most prefolds, flats, fitteds and many other types of cloth diaper inserts are just a plant in a different form, this means that they with breakdown much faster than disposable diapers which are mostly synthetic.

Cloth diapers reduce waste to landfill by 99%

A stash of around 30 cloth diapers with a few extra inserts weighs about 20lbs (9.07kg) while the over 8,000 disposable diapers your baby would need weighs in at around 2,000lbs (907.18kg).

And if you do some quick math, 20lbs (9.07kg) is 1% of 2,000lbs (907.18kg), therefore cloth diapers reduce diaper waste by 99%, crazy right?!

Also, for the weight I was using the weight of an average pocket diaper with 1 insert which is around 8ozs (0.22kg)

So, 8ozs (0.22kg) x 30 cloth diapers = 240ozs (6.80kg)

240ozs = 15lbs (6.80kg), so really 30 average pocket cloth diapers only produce 0.75% of the waste that disposables do, but overnight diapers are probably going to be heavier, and you will most likely have extra inserts.

So, I added 5lbs (2.26kg) to account for the extra inserts and heavier overnight diapers, bringing the total weight to 20lbs (9.07kg).

And the reduction in waste only grows with each baby that uses those cloth diapers!

With disposable diapers each baby will produce an additional 2,000lbs (907.18kg) of diaper waste, but with cloth diapers you can reuse most of, if not all of your cloth diapers on multiple kids.

This means you can reduce your diaper waste even more!

Cloth diaper reduce risk of ground water contamination

When you through away a poopy disposable diaper, it then goes to the landfill where the baby poo cannot breakdown properly since it is buried almost instantly under tons more garbage.

This means that the poo isn’t exposed to sunlight and air, making it take way longer to breakdown and it will never compost.

So, when it rains the water soaks through or washes over all the garbage, picks up poo particles and then either runs off into rivers or soaks down into, and potentially contaminates groundwater.

Whereas when you use cloth diapers 99% (if not more) of the poop goes in the toilet and into the septic system which is designed specifically to keep the sewage contained and properly treat it.

Most people also don’t want detergent in their groundwater and rivers either so wherever your washing machine drains too is probably pretty safe as well.

Cloth diapers reduce demand for fossil fuels

Because you only need to buy cloth diapers once, they only need to be transported once, manufactured once, and the materials to make them only need to be grown once.

1 semi-truck can hold around 268,240 disposable diapers which is enough to get around 31 babies from birth to potty-training.

Now let’s say that a cloth diaper is 4x the size of a disposable diaper, that would mean 1 semi-truck could hold 67,060 cloth diapers.

So, 1 baby needs about 24-30 cloth diapers from birth-potty training so each semi-truck would have enough cloth diapers for 2,200 babies.

There were 3.6 million babies born in 2020 you would need around 115,000 semi-trucks worth of disposable diapers for those babies.

Whereas you would only need 1,600 semi-trucks to haul the cloth diapers for that same number of babies.

That is a 76.58% reduction in transportation needs and therefore a massive reduction in fossil fuel needs.

That is not including the extra need for garbage trucks to haul away the dirty disposables.

Cloth diapers have no harsh chemicals or carcinogens

Disposable diapers have a ton of nasty stuff in them, such as Dioxins, Acrylic acid, Formaldehyde-resin and Quaternary ammonium compounds, along with many others.

Most of these are known to have negative effects on reproductive and respiratory health (linked to asthma & other respiratory problems), are carcinogens (cancer causing), or are hazardous to aquatic life.

You might be wondering “how something in a diaper can effect respiratory health?” well, in order to get all the materials in the disposable to be white they must be bleached.

When bleaching the materials chlorine derivatives like Chlorine dioxide are used, according to the Agency for toxic substances & Disease registry, exposure to Chlorine dioxide in children can reduce the bloods’ ability to carry oxygen.

This of course makes it more difficult to breath, and Chlorine dioxide is extremely hazardous to aquatic life and waterways.

Cloth diapers on the other hand have little to no harsh chemicals in them, to the point that it’s probably safer to chew on a non-organic cotton prefold, than a non-organic fruit or vegetable.

Because even though cotton is one of the most heavily sprayed crops, during the process where the cotton fluff is made into thread, and then fabric, the vast majority of the pesticides/herbicides are removed.

However, organic cotton is way better for the environment because the pesticides/herbicides were never used in the first place.

Bamboo is processed with some pretty harsh chemicals, but it’s hard to tell whether or not they are still present once the fabric is a cloth diaper insert.

So, if you want the least chemicals possible both on your baby and in the environment then hemp is the way to go.

Hemp is naturally pest resistant, so it doesn’t need pesticides, needs very little water and grows in places where most other plants don’t do well, including weeds, so it doesn’t need herbicides either.

Also, hemp is the most absorbent cloth diapering material!

For a full list of harmful chemicals in disposable diapers check out my article “Are cloth diapers actually better for the environment?”

Cloth diapers can adjust to fit your baby’s size

Cloth diapers have snaps on the front of the diaper and along the waist, these snaps allow you to adjust the cloth diapers to fit baby’s legs and waist perfectly.

These snaps also allow the cloth diaper to fit your baby for a very long time, typically from 3 months old to 3 years old, or from around 10-12 pounds (4.53-5.44kg) up to around 30-35 pounds (13.60-15.87kg).

If you want to learn more about cloth diaper fit, sizing, etc check out my article “Do cloth diapers come in sizes?”

Cons of cloth diapering

• Larger up-front cost
• They need to be washed
• Negative comments from people
• Sorting through misinformation
• Learning about absorbency
• Learning what fits your baby best

Cloth diapers have a larger up-front cost

A stash of 30 cloth diapers with an average price of $17.00 per diaper comes to a total cost of $510.00.

Now, while that may seem like a lot, that is still a savings of over $2,000, not including your local taxes or shipping if you have your diapers delivered.

The average disposable diaper costs about $0.31 each, now at first glance it seems that the cloth diapers are the more expensive option, but the catch is you now have to multiply that $0.31 by 8,736.

The average baby goes through 8 diapers a day, times that by 7 days in a week you get 56 diapers a week, then times that by 52 weeks in a year and you get 2,912 diapers in 1 year.

With the average baby potty-training around 3, you take the 2,912 diapers per year and times that by 3 years to get 8,736 diapers for 1 baby.

Now we add in the money, $0.31 per disposable diaper x 8,736 diapers = $2,708.16, in Wayne County Ohio where I’m from the tax rate is 6.5%, so add another $176.03 in tax to get the grand total of $2,884.19.

When you add tax to the $510.00 for cloth diapers you get $33.15, for a total of $543.15.

So, $2,884.19 – $543.15 = your savings of $2,341.04!

So, while you will have to spend a few hundred dollars the first week for cloth diapers as opposed to $20.00 for disposables, you will never have to spend money on diapers again.

If you want to know the cost breakdown for cloth wipes check out my article ” Are cloth wipes worth it? Cost comparison & popular brands”

Cloth diapers need to be washed

Washing cloth diapers is one of the main things that scares people away from cloth diapering.

But once you know the basics, it’s actually pretty simple.

You just need water and laundry detergent, not soap, detergent.

Make sure you don’t use fabric softener, and make sure that your detergent doesn’t have a fabric softener in it, since fabric softener will coat your cloth diapers in a wax and make them unable to absorb.

Scents only really seem to matter if your baby has sensitivities to them.

All you need to do is

1 quick wash to get most of the poop and pee off the diapers, with either no detergent or a little bit of detergent, you can use any water temperature you want, however hot water tends to set stains.

Then run your cloth diapers through the longest wash cycle your washing machine has, once again you can use any temperature you want and in the second wash it’s safer to use hot water since most of the poo is gone.

After that you can do an extra rinse to get out any leftover detergent.

However, if you have hard water running a rinse without detergent can lead to mineral buildup in your cloth diapers, since there would be no detergent to pull the minerals out of your diapers.

Then you dry your cloth diapers, either in the dryer on low heat or you can hang them out on a clothesline.

If you want to learn more about washing cloth diapers check out my article “Best detergent for cloth diapers?”

Negative comments from people

Some people are very against cloth diapers for some reason, sometimes it’s elderly people who assume you are going to be using the same birdseye cotton flats and plastic pants that they used 50 years ago.

They aren’t exactly trying to be mean, but their “advice” can be either demeaning or downright rude as well as being wrong or giving you outdated information.

I have also heard of some elderly people who feel that cloth diapers are only used by people who are extremely poor.

Other people feel that since you are going to cloth diaper that they must justify why they did not cloth diaper and this leads to them bad mouthing cloth diapers.

Whatever their reason for their unhelpful/ rude comments, this is your baby and therefore it is your job to do your own research and decide what is best for them.

No one else gets to make that decision but you.

Cloth diapers are not gross, they don’t cause diaper rash, they don’t delay your baby’s development, they aren’t hard to wash, and they aren’t for poor people only.

Sorting through cloth diaper misinformation

Cloth diapers are not a one size fits all kinda thing, just because a certain brand of cloth diaper or a certain wash routine works great for one person doesn’t mean it will work great for everyone.

For example, there are a lot of people who swear by using a full cap of liquid detergent in each wash cycle when washing your cloth diapers.

However, if I tried to use a full cap of detergent in either wash cycle my entire house would be full of suds, I only use about 1/8 of a cap in the first quick wash and about 1/4 cap for the long main wash.

And depending on what style of cloth diaper I’m washing, even this amount of detergent could be too much.

And this is perfectly normal, some people need tons of detergent, some people need very little, other people need to use hot water and other people can just use cold.

Where you start to get misinformation is when someone who uses an obscene amount of detergent and only uses hot water tells you that the way they wash their cloth diapers is the “only correct way” to wash cloth diapers.

There is no “only correct way” to wash cloth diapers.

This was the biggest obstacle for me when I first started looking into cloth diapers because, what do you do? where do you start? how do I know I’m not ruining my cloth diapers?

These people say one thing and then these other people say literally the exact opposite, so who do you listen to?

My answer to this was I listened to everyone and then took all the information and did what I felt made the most sense, if I started to have problems, I had the information to figure out what I needed to change.

Learning about cloth diaper absorbency

Cloth diapers do have a learning curve, and one of things you need to learn is how much absorbency your baby needs.

If your baby is a light wetter, you’re in luck and you don’t need a lot of absorbency, however if your baby is a heavy wetter you could be in for a lot of trial and error.

There are different materials with different absorbing abilities, there are also different materials that are better depending on how fast your baby pees.

If you want to learn more about cloth diapering materials and absorbency, check out my article “What is the most absorbent fabric for cloth diapers?”

Learning which cloth diapers fit your baby best

Cloth diapers are extremely adjustable, but every cloth diaper is designed differently and therefore they will fit each baby differently.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing, a bad thing because the first few cloth diapers you buy might fit your baby a little funny.

However, I have never had a cloth diaper that flat out didn’t work, they’ve only ever fit awkwardly for a while until my kids went through a growth spurt and their bodies would change a little and the diapers would fit better.

The fact that all cloth diapers are slightly different is also a good thing because you will have a cloth diaper that is perfect for all different occasions.

There is no 1 cloth diaper that is perfect for every single thing, you will probably need a different kind of cloth diaper for overnight than you will for daytime.

So, you will probably need to try a few different styles/brands of cloth diapers to find one that you really love.

If you want to learn more about how to find the right cloth diaper for you check out my article ” How to find the right cloth diaper for you?”

Resources

Article on how disposable diapers can contaminate ground water justpeachybaby.com

Article with the number/ pounds of disposables a baby uses smallfootprintfamily.com

Link to Cloth-eez workhorse fitteds at greenmountaindiapers.com

Link to Lil’ helper cloth diapers at lilhelper.com

Link to Imagine baby bamboo all-in-one at nickisdiapers.com

Link to Rumparooz OBV pocket diaper at kangacare.com