Cloth Diaper Benefits Baby Health & The Environment

**partial of my Happy Heinys Cloth Diapers..so cute, isnt it?

Cloth Diapers come in rainbow of colors and patterns, with cutesy names – Happy Heinys, BumGenius, Swaddlebees, Tiny Tush and many many more. But despite such creative conventions, local cloth diaper advocates take the environmental and health benefits of cloth diapers very seriously.Advocates say cloth diapers are more eco-friendly, since they don’t end up in landfills, and healthier for babies because they are free from toxins that may be found in disposable diapers.

Amy Ellison, a cloth diapering educator who teaches at Be By Baby in Lakeview, said that health and comfort concerns are also an important consideration for parents looking into utilizing reusable diapers. The major fear is the chemicals that have traditionally been used in disposable-diaper manufacturing, such as dioxin, a chemical contaminant that’s created in the wood pulp-making process, Tributyl-tin (known as TBT), a toxic organotin, and sodium polyacrylate, the super-absorbent gel that Ellison said was removed from tampons due to a potential link to toxic shock syndrome.

Lisa Joy Rosing, an Evanston mother who teaches cloth diapering classes at three locations in the Chicago area, said it’s important to consider that the average baby uses 6,000 diapers from birth to potty-learning, producing about 4,000 pounds of waste that ends up in a landfill. She also said she’s concerned about the presence of human feces in landfills, which the World Health Organization and American Public Health Organization say could cause the spread of disease and bacteria. Disposable diaper packaging instructs consumers to flush solid waste down a toilet, but that instruction is usually ignored by harried parents who would rather just throw away the waste.

Cloth diapering advocates also point out that the comfort of cloth diapers – or lack of comfort when a child urinates and it isn’t immediately absorbed – may also lead to another benefit: earlier potty-learning. In fact, according to Rosing, studies show that children who use cloth diapers tend to become potty-trained six months earlier, on average. She said her own children would even bring her diapers when they became wet because they were aware of the sensation.

**Sources was adopted from : Medillnews Report Chicago by Elizabeth Diffin (30th April 2009)