Diaper is defined as a soft, absorbent cloth folded and arranged between the legs and around the waist of a baby to absorb and contain excretions; or a piece of absorbent material with a waterproof outer layer, having the same function but intended to be discarded or cleaned after a single use in full.

In general, diaper can broadly be classified under disposable or washable type. But the question is: which one is the best? This is a debatable and truly subjective question where no one can easily answer at once. First of all, we must always keep in mind that each baby is born to be different, especially in suiting and reacting themselves to a particular diaper. For parents, it will be a matter of personal preference, how you feel on other factors that come into reality when making a wise selection between washable and disposable diapers.

Due to the industrialization and modernization of the society, the use of disposable diaper tends to be more popular and trendier than washable diaper in the past few decades. Washable diaper is frequently perceived as old product that produced under 70s technology. In certain occasion, you will easily attract public attention if they know that your baby is "still" using washable diaper.

However, no one is really keen to analyze the environmental impact on excessive usage of disposable diaper. When your bin is full of disposable diapers everyday, how could these little rubbish (but could be of huge volume cumulatively) be disposed of out of your eyesight? While it is not recyclable or degradable, it will just be filled under the land most of the time, or been burnt off effortlessly in many developing countries.

The functional advantage of disposable diaper, as compared to washable type, is their special ability to absorb and retain moisture (i.e. urine). Under decades of improvement, disposable diaper that being synthetically made today could easily absorb 15-20 times than its ordinary weight. This is far exceeded the capacity of natural fibers, and turned to be the key selling point that attracted young parents and nannies. However, this key advantage could also be the major culprit which is accountable for "bulk content" of used diaper that will complicate the entire garbage disposal.

Apart from the disposal of diapers, the thermal processing of disposable diaper has also brought some adverse effects to our mother earth. While the chemical compounds are stable enough to be comfortably consumed, the disposable diaper are formulated by non woven fibers. Those embedded chemical particles will functionally interact with water molecules, and absorb vast amounts of water. Nevertheless, those plastic resins are assembled chemically or thermally, which has no merit from the context of global warming. The climate change will eventually affect the surrounding habitat that we will no longer enjoy with, moreover for the younger generation.

By Ding

FamilyDiaperBag.com