First of all thanks for your involvement to know the difference between cloth and disposal diapers. Disposal diapers are not ecofriendly to the sourrounding and it harm the environment. Instead cloth diapers are easy to use,
So my personal suggestion is also to use cloth diapers. I'm using Smartipants company cloth diaper products for my kids.

CDs are sooo cute too!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Greener choice and fewer chemicals on the baby. Aren't those the only 2 reasons?

I didn't care about either of those things, I'm not particularly crunchy or environmental. I ran the numbers and found that cloth diapers were way cheaper. Especially if used for two, which we were planning on having close together. I was very budget conscious at that time and doing anything I could to save money.

We did end up having 2 children less than 2 years apart and used the same set of diapers for both. I forgot the exact numbers, but it was around 1.5k-2k considering both kids were potty trained by 2 1/2, still used the cloth diaper at night until around 4 for both boys.

I hated running to the store and buying all the diapers. We bought about a pack a month to use when we went out. No way we spent more than $600, maybe more and I had about 40+ diapers. I got most on second's sale at Bum Genius and many were $6-8 each (free shipping). Never bothered with a diaper sprayer, just had a $10 diaper pail and that was it. I washed every 2-3 days. So 2-3 extra loads a week.

This article reads like an advertisement for the disposable diaper industry. I mean, one giant LOL to the assertion that Kimberly Clark and P&G are somehow model ethical companies. Yes, Kimberly Clark has made some strides in the sustainable forestry arena, due to pressure from green peace, after many years of clear cutting old growth forests. But both run toxic industries and test on animals.

Anonymous wrote:

I don't see people arguing that we should wear disposable underwear, or socks, or dishes... But cloth diapers are so environmentally unfriendly because you wash them? GTFO.

That's the part I always get stuck on, too. The cotton prefolds we used required 1.5 extra loads of laundry per week, with a front-loading washer, and they lasted halfway through the second child before we turned them into cleaning rags. And the cotton prefolds for the second half of the second child got passed on for somebody else to use.

Although there has been at least one study (or "study") purporting to show that disposable coffee cups are better for the environment than mugs.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02393618

As I recall (the article is behind a paywall), this was based on the assumption that people only used their mugs something like 20 times. I just had a mug break that I bought in 1985.