Sofía Corzo Mr. Callahan Pre-AP English 10 / 10-2 March 16th, 2015 The Fight that Lies in Babies’ Underpants Sometimes the smallest aspects of a person’s day-to-day life can have the biggest impacts. Especially in the first years of life, a couple of actions can determine a child’s future health and his/her development. Such is the case with diapers. Dealing with the inconvenient part of becoming a new parent, these fill a vital role in ensuring basic hygiene for newborns and infants. And because they are so necessary, whether to use disposable or cloth diapers is a choice that reflects which priorities parents have when it comes to nurturing. The conflict between convenience and environmental responsibility that arises from disposable, cloth …show more content…
The debate between disposable and cloth diapers is still a controversial one, mainly due to …show more content…
Arguably the one issue that cloth diapers have an obvious advantage to disposables, the strong statistics shining disposable diapers in an unfavorable light are extremely extensive. Keeping in mind that according to the Real Diaper Association, until a baby is able to go to the bathroom without requiring diapers, it will use about 9,000, which is about 2 tons of non-biodegradable waste per baby. About 133 million babies are born each year around the world and if half use disposable diapers, this results in an enormous amount of single-use diapers. 92% end up in landfills. This is especially discouraging considering that disposable diapers take about 250 to 500 years to decompose, meaning that it takes a lot more time for those diapers to be gone than it takes for the babies that used them to have great-grandchildren. According to “Cloth versus Disposable: The Diaper Facts,” disposable diapers are the third largest single product in landfills and make up about 4% of solid waste. In a house with a child that uses disposable diapers, this can make up about half of the total household waste. The Disposable Diaper Industry Source tried to approach this problem in 2000 when Absormex, a disposables company, launched the first biodegradable diaper in the world. The company claimed that the diaper would biodegrade 200% faster than regular diapers, and because of claims