Closing the Poop Loop

Great idea -- combining ecological sanitation with diaper disposal! The Real Diaper Association estimates that:

• 27.4 billion disposable diapers are consumed every year in the U.S;
• less than one half of one percent of all waste from single-use diapers goes into the sewage system;
• over 92% of all single-use diapers end up in a landfill; and
• it takes a disposable diaper about 250-500 years to decompose.

Closing the Poop Loop

Solving the diaper dilemma, sustainably.

By Leah Zerbe

Inspiration often comes in unexpected ways. In Mark Siminoff’s case, gazing at his curbside garbage one morning caused him to suddenly feel the guilt of fatherhood—not for bringing two children into the world, but for the amount of waste they created in the form of dirty disposable diapers. “I wasn’t living a sustainable lifestyle,” he says. “As a daddy, I wasn’t being responsible.”

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average child goes through 8,000 disposable diapers during early childhood. Determined to avoid landfill-bound disposables, Siminoff and his wife tried other options, including reusable diapers with flushable inserts. (Let’s just say that didn’t agree with the plumbing).

Failing to find a satisfactory alternative, Siminoff joined forces with Stephen Wahl, a design-savvy dad also looking for suitable diapering methods. Together they formed Earth Baby Compostable Diaper Service, a San Francisco Bay–based business that collects the used diapers of nearly 1,250 families. Parents pay $30 a month plus the cost of the diapers, which are made of wood pulp (a paper-manufacturing by-product that has been certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council) and non-genetically-modified corn.


Source -- read more:  http://www.organicgardening.com/living/closing-poop-loop?cm_mmc=LivingLightlyNL-_-1063176-_-10082012-_-closing_the_poop_loop_title

Read more:

1. Real Diaper Association -- http://www.realdiaperassociation.org/diaperfacts.php