Category Archives: Cloth Diapers

Cheapie Leakies

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Unhappy baby

Why I don’t buy cloth diapers that come without support or warranty.

We’re often asked about some of the less expensive cloth diapers on the market, and why we don’t offer them at bynature.ca. When compared to economical options such as Bummis wraps and prefolds or an amazing DUO system such as AMP Diapers, the quality, absorbency and effectiveness does not compare. These high quality systems offer super value, while limiting the frustration parents will have with leaking, poor fit, or fabrics that fall apart over time—all of which will cost more in the long run.

Cloth Diapers are our specialty! We get so much feedback from parents time and time again about other products on the market, products that send them running to us for replacements that will not cause frustration. We aren’t going to sell something that is continuously causing problems for our customers.

Cloth diapers in general have SO much value compared to single-use products. And, many cloth diapers that seem higher priced actually reflect the value of products made ethically and sustainably, not cheaply and without care for workers or the environment. These high value products are also safety tested to the highest standards, so you can be assured you’re buying something that is safe for your little one. We can offer many tips in our store to help get you set up with cloth diapers for as little as $200. That buys you a system that will work well, fit well, absorb well, and where we know workers haven’t been exploited to diaper your baby (that is, someone else has actually paid the price).

In our eight years of experience, the bottom line is: you get what you pay for. When you buy your diapers from us, you’re also investing in our experience helping thousands of clients along the way to getting off to a great start, with product support, laundry advice, and troubleshooting. We can’t do what we do without your support and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Getting more babies into cloth diapers has been our mission from day one!

What Our Customers Say

A couple of months ago, we posted the statement above. Our customers shared their experiences as well.

Learned That Lesson the Hard Way

“I found some very inexpensive pockets with my first. The extra laundry caused by all the leaks let me know very quickly that cheap cloth diapers are false economy. I’m expecting kid #2 and am glad I saw the value in better diapers because now I have a stash waiting to go for another child.” J.W.

“Absolutely! We received some inexpensive cloth diapers as gifts and ended up hating them! They were available at large baby registry retailers (you know who I mean) and I so much prefer my diapering and service experience with a (somewhat) local company! Thank you for being there!” V.F.

“Totally agree! I’m a self-proclaimed bargain hunter who loves a good find. After buying a few cheaper diapers from a big box store (thinking I was getting a good deal) and not being happy with the results (poor fit, bulky, leaked, etc), I was very hesitant to try more expensive ones. I was SOOO glad I tried ‘just a few’ from my local ‘natural parenting store’ after seeing how different they were from the big-box ones. Even my husband was impressed and actually used them! I’ve had to buy a new stash of diapers for surprise baby #3 after giving all mine from baby #2 away, but am so excited for baby to be born to put the new diapers on him.” K.O.

Research Pays Off

“I bought my first cloth diapers from you almost 5 years ago and have since filled out my stash of mostly Fuzzi Bunz from you as well. I am now CDing my third child and the diapers and accessories I first purchased are still going strong after 3 kids! In fact, many of them still look almost new! After tons of research (including the “cloth diapering 101″ on your website), I am so glad I went with a quality system so I didn’t have to keep replacing diapers after each child!” M.H.

Great Cloth Diapers Last!

“Some of my Motherease have been going strong for over 11 years now!! And they still work as well as the day I originally bought them! I bought the bulk of mine in UK, imported from Canada, and then I topped up here from you. I love them, they fit my children very well. We are now done with diapers and I am about to pass these on.” T.W.

Quality Cloth Diapers Can Come on a Budget

“I think it depends on what you mean by cheap. We use flats with covers, and they were very inexpensive, but work fabulously! There are good quality cloth diapers for every budget and need, and if one cannot afford or do not want to buy a $500 system, one can spend $100 and easily cloth diaper from birth to potty.” K.J.W.

“[C]heap and low cost are not always the same thing. I get frustrated when people are turned off of cloth diapering because of poorly made products, but I am equally frustrated by people being turned off by the belief that one must purchase $30 diapers to effectively diaper their babies.” K.J.W.

Prefolds remain one of our best selling diapers, and they cost less than $5 each. They will also have use well beyond the diapering years, so that initial investment goes much further with the right product. I’m still using ours for rags and puppy pads eight years later, after diapering two children. Some parents are intimidated by them, but that’s where we come in.

What do we mean by “cheap”? Our definition of “cheap” is pretty extensive. Over the holidays we ran a series on the true costs of cheap products.

Image © Andrey Armyagov | Dreamstime.com

Hemp vs Bamboo Rayon for Cloth Diapers

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bamboo plants

We get a lot of questions from customers in the bynature.ca store asking why they would want to choose bamboo vs. hemp for cloth diapers. Short answer: choose hemp for environment or absorbency, and choose bamboo rayon for softness.

Overall, we prefer hemp. In our completely unscientific survey of Facebook followers,
parents choose hemp 8 to 3. But, parents who love bamboo rayon diapers really love them. That’s fine, of course! Use what you love.

What’s the difference between bamboo and hemp?

Bamboo and hemp are both woody plants that grow easily without the kind of chemical inputs (pesticides, fungicides) and the heavy watering needed by cotton. On a microscope level, each little hemp fiber even looks a bit like a bamboo stalk with smooth areas between knobby spots. So far so good.

For parents who have used both fibers in diapers, you will notice the difference in feel (bamboo is very soft while hemp is more stiff) and function (bamboo is absorbent but not nearly as absorbent as super soaker hemp).

For parents looking to lower their environmental impact, the biggest differences between bamboo and hemp are in the processing of fibers used in cloth diapers. Bamboo is broken down into pulp, chemically processed and aged, then extruded as a rayon fiber. This is a long (often years long) process that involves a lot of chemicals. Bamboo rayon is a synthetic fiber from natural inputs. Hemp is mechanically processed, aided by natural enzymes and chemicals. The hemp fibers spun into yarn are the natural fibers from the plant. Most of the story of impact is in the process, and there are certainly manufacturers working to lower the impact of processing for both fibers. What you have available to you right now is a high-impact rayon that is currently very popular and marketed as eco-friendly and a lower-impact hemp that is perhaps not as popular as it has been in the past decade and not marketed as heavily.

How rayon fibers are made from bamboo

Rayon made from bamboo. To make the bamboo rayon fibers used in diapers, the soft parts of the bamboo plant are crushed into pulp. Wood pulp and pulp made from other cellulose fibers can also be used to create rayon (or viscose, as regular rayon is called). The pulp is then dissolved, dried, sent through several phases of aging and ripening, cooking and burning before being extruded into long fibers. Think of extrusion as forcing pasta dough through a spaghetti press. Chemicals are used in many of these steps to create a material that can be extruded and hold together as a fiber. A lot of the negative publicity about bamboo focuses on these chemical processes. After extrusion, the fibers are bathed in sulfuric acid, stretched, and washed. Then, you have rayon filaments that can be knit or woven into a fabric.

Bamboo can be processed in a closed loop, so the solvents are captured rather than waste. Because of the popularity of fabrics made from bamboo, there are a lot of companies working to develop more eco-friendly processes. There are also efforts to add nano-particles of charcoal to make the fiber antibacterial.

For now, any fiber made from bamboo cellulose but be labelled “rayon” or “rayon made from bamboo” in order to comply with U.S. Federal Trade Commission guidelines. (“Have You Been Bamboozled?” FTC, January 4, 2013.)

Linen made from bamboo. There is also a form of bamboo processing that is closer to that of hemp. The woody part of the plant is crushed, and an enzyme is used in the retting process, breaking down the rough outer layers to get to the softer inner layers. Those softer, inner fibers can then be spun into yarn. Unless your diapers are labelled “linen made from bamboo,” they are made from “rayon made from bamboo” (and we don’t know of any cloth diapers made from bamboo linen).

Source of bamboo. It’s great that bamboo can grow easily in some places where other plants can’t. The environmental and social problems happen when the demand for bamboo rayon is so high that forests are cut down to plant bamboo, people are pushed off their land for bamboo, or bamboo is grown in monoculture. What CAN be done in bamboo cultivation isn’t necessarily what IS done, so we need to look at the provenance of our fibers. Most bamboo is used in fabric production is grown by one massive company in China, which grows the fibers to Oeko-Tex 100 standards, but many manufacturers of textiles made with bamboo rayon claim to process their own fibers outside of that system. It matters where and how bamboo is processed, so ask your cloth diaper manufacturer. If they don’t know about the process used, they should be able to follow the chain to their suppliers and find out.

Antibacterial? The U.S. FTC says bamboo rayon fabric does not have antibacterial qualities as often marketed, while many manufacturers continue to claim antibacterial properties and testing that proves it. The legal battles are still underway, so it’s fair to be skeptical of both claims for now.

How hemp fibers are made

The process of making usable yarn from hemp is similar to that of making linen from bamboo. The stem of the hemp plant is wound with heavy fibers. An enzyme is used in retting, and the softer (though not necessarily soft) fibers are spun into yarn. The softness of hemp depends on the point in the season or growing process when the hemp is harvested. Those who work with hemp often can tell the difference between the softer, early season hemp and the stiffer, late season hemp.

Hemp is generally mixed with other fibers. The hemp most often used for cloth diapers is 45% hemp / 55% cotton, taking on the absorbency of hemp and the softness of cotton. To use 100% hemp in a diaper would give a stiffer feel like linen, though it is possible to made a very soft hemp linen by using only the finest fibers.

Quick Comparison of Bamboo and Hemp for Cloth Diapers

Bamboo
PRO

  • soft to the touch in the product,
  • renewable fiber,
  • lower impact than petroleum-based fibers,
  • easy to grow in the field,
  • can be made in a closed system to reduce environmental impact

CON

  • often greenwashed in deceptive or uninformed marketing,
  • chemically processed to create rayon,
  • environmental injustices in meeting the recent demand,
  • more sensitive fiber than cotton or hemp to detergent chemicals and drying heat of cloth diaper laundry,
  • many manufacturers recommend line drying to avoid dryer heat,
  • can be damaged by some basic laundry detergent ingredients (like baking soda)

Hemp
PRO

  • very absorbent in the product,
  • renewable fiber,
  • lower impact than petroleum-based fibers and other plant-based fibers (cotton and bamboo),
  • easy to grow in the field

CON

  • stiffer to the touch than bamboo rayon or cotton,
  • so absorbent that it can retain stink in diapers if not rinsed properly,
  • needs more water in laundry process,
  • can be difficult to maintain in HE (high efficiency) washer

Why Choose Bamboo vs. Hemp?

In the end, whether you choose bamboo rayon or hemp for cloth diapers depends on your priorities.

  • If you are looking for a soft diaper, choose bamboo rayon. It is super soft and silky to the touch.
  • If you are looking for lower environmental impact, choose hemp. It is easy to grow in the field. Although there is usually a chemical process to soften the fibers for spinning (though hemp can be mechanically processed), this is a much less problematic process than that of breaking down bamboo.
  • If your laundry detergent includes baking soda, choose hemp (or change detergents). Baking soda will damage bamboo diapers, beginning the process of breaking down the cellulose.
  • If you are looking for an absorbent diaper, choose hemp. Hemp is a super absorbent fiber.
  • If you are trying to give your baby a stay-dry feeling without petroleum products, choose hemp. Because of its absorbency, the surface feels more dry than other fibers holding the same amount of liquid.
  • If you have an HE washing machine, choose bamboo rayon—or cotton. Hemp is so absorbent that it requires more water in washing and rinsing to keep it soft and clean. But, be careful with bamboo rayon in an HE washing machine, because it is important that it be rinsed well.
  • If your water is very hard, skip both hemp (because it can retain mineral build up) and bamboo rayon (because it is sensitive to the chemicals you need to use to wash in very hard water and can break down in the heat of the dryer if those chemicals aren’t rinsed well), and choose cotton.

We LOVE hemp in the bynature.ca store for many reasons, but we are always answering questions for customers about bamboo rayon—and why we don’t stock more of it. From an environmental standpoint, hemp has bamboo beat. In diapers, when it comes to absorbency and the natural stay-dry feeling, hemp also excels. The soft and silky feeling of bamboo is hard to resist though!

Image © Les Cunliffe | Dreamstime.com

Cotton Diapers – Do You Choose Organic or Not?

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Organic cotton prefold cloth diapers

We were surprised when we asked customers about organic cotton diapers because their reasons for choosing organic don’t always match what we know about the benefits of organic. We recommend organic over non-organic, but our reasons might not be what you expect.

We’re stepping back slightly from our laundry series this week in celebration of the Great Cloth Diaper Change coming up this weekend. There will be events around the world Saturday, April 20th at 11:00AM local time, when babies will have their cloth diapers changed for a Guinness World Records global event. If you haven’t registered yet for an event local to you, you might still be able to squeak in.

What makes it organic?
Organic isn’t just a matter of avoiding use of pesticides and other chemical inputs then calling a product organic. “Organic” is a label that is given following certification to detailed standards. Without the certification, a product can’t be labelled “organic” even if it is grown or processed exactly as certified products are. The certification doesn’t make the product clean; the process makes the product clean. But, the certification is your assurance about the process.

In the field. In the U.S., the Department of Agriculture runs the National Organic Program (NOP). For textile fibers, this program sets standards only up to harvest. Short of organic, there are other efforts to reduce the worst toxic pesticides, like the Sustainable Cotton Project’s Cleaner Cotton.

In processing. For post-harvest processing, you will often see a GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certification. A whole product can be certified organic by GOTS.

Fiber content. Globally, the Textile Exchange certifies the Organic Content Standard (used to be Organic Exchange [OE] Standard).

Looking for NOP, GOTS, or OE/OCS certifications is your assurance that products are certified to organic standards.

Is Organic Better for the Environment?
Absolutely. The most important reason to buy organic is the reduction of toxins, even known carcinogens, in the environment. It takes a lot of chemicals to grow conventional cotton. When it takes 1/3 lb of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers to produce one cotton T-shirt, you can begin to see how the impact of three dozen prefolds builds. To give you some idea of scale, every year 6.9 million pounds of chemicals are sprayed on conventional cotton in California alone. Organic food and fiber both avoid most of the agricultural and industrial chemicals of conventional food and fiber. Most. Is organic the only answer? Not at all. There are issues with some organic standards, but that shouldn’t keep you from looking for the cleanest solution to your needs. When you buy cotton diapers, whether certified organic as a whole product or just made with organic cotton, you reduce the chemical burden on the environment. You reduce the pollution of air, water, and soil that will get back around to you.

Is Organic Better for the Skin?
No. This is one of the reasons our customer claim for choosing organic, but no studies show that organic cotton is better for your skin or for your health than conventional cotton. Organically grown cotton is not inherently softer than conventional cotton, though the quality of organic cotton can sometimes be better as it grows without exposure to toxins. There are no pesticide residues in conventional cotton. Certainly, organic is better for your health in the global view, as it reduces environmental pollution, but that benefit is indirect. When either conventional cotton or organic cotton has been treated with other chemicals in the processing, that is another matter. When you are told that organic feels cleaner on your skin, though, you are hearing a marketing pitch not scientific fact.

Is Organic Expensive?
Sometimes. Organic food and fibers do cost more than conventional, but that is really only expensive if you are not counting the external costs of the toxin burden of conventional cotton. As long as the production is more expensive, the organic products you buy will be more expensive. But, organic isn’t that much more expensive when compared with equivalent products made with conventional cotton. When you look at a one-time expense like organic cotton prefolds, the difference in cost isn’t so great that it would keep most families from using organic. When cost of the initial investment in diapers is an issue, simple prefold diapers are the affordable option we recommend.

Is Organic Worth It?
Yes. Despite the fact that your baby isn’t exposed to pesticides through conventional cotton diapers and the sometimes higher price tag on organic diapers, it is worth it to choose organic because you reduce the overall toxic burden in our world. You reduce toxins in the field; for the workers; downstream in the air, water, and soil; for yourself; and for your baby.

As one follower wrote, organic “feels better. . . on my conscience.” For a lot of our customers, this is the key. We recommend organic cotton diapers primarily because it lowers the chemical burden on world—the whole, interconnected world that leads right back to us and our babies. We are concerned with the big picture, and we feel better about organic.

Do you want to read more about organic cotton?

Read the story of Patagonia’s switch to organic cotton over the past 20 years. It wasn’t easy, but it was the obvious choice for them once they understood the real impacts of conventional cotton. Their quest for better choices doesn’t end with organic cotton, though. They continue to push boundaries.

If you aren’t already convinced that it’s important to choose organic fabric, especially for your baby, read this article on getting rid of chemicals in fabrics from O Ecotextiles. When it comes to direct chemical exposure, the issue isn’t about organic in the field; it’s all about the processing.

 

Cloth Diaper Washing: Wet Pail or Dry Pail?

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Diaper Pail

Before you wash your cloth diapers, where will you store them? You can use a wet pail, which means leaving the diapers to soak in water, or a dry pail, which means not adding water.

Which will work better for your diapers? We will walk you through the pros and cons of your diaper pail choices.

The short answer: there isn’t a lot of difference in choosing wet or dry pail. Starting with a dry pail is simple, and many families don’t find the need to try a wet pail

Wet Pail
A wet diaper pail is a hard pail filled with water. The diapers soak in the water until you wash them. You can also add stain and odor eliminators.

Pros

  • Pre-soaking diapers means fewer stains
  • Less need for pre-rinse once diapers are in the washing machine

Cons

  • Some manufacturers recommend against using a wet pail for pocket diapers or PUL covers
  • Drowning risk for young children or pets
  • Heavier to carry to the washing machine (though it shouldn’t be too heavy to carry)
  • Top-loading machine is essential if you plan to pour the diaper pail into the washer.

Dry Pail
A dry diaper pail can be either a hard pail with a liner or a hanging pail (just the wet bag or liner). A dry pail isn’t exactly dry, since you fill it with wet diapers, but “dry” refers to not adding more water. You can also add stain and odor eliminators to a dry pail, though be careful not to let oils or treatments sit directly on diapers unless you know that is safe (as in the case of enzyme spray).

Pros

  • Lighter pail
  • Easier to transfer from pail to front-loading washing machine
  • No drowning hazard

Cons

  • More likely to get stains as mess sits on fabric for a day or more
  • Need diaper pail liner (though that’s not much of a con)
  • Tougher to control odor with a hanging dry pail

I used both. I put dirty diapers in a wet pail (which I stored in the bathtub, away from curious little hands), put wet diapers in a dry pail next to the changing table, and never put covers anywhere near the pail.

Which pail type you choose depends on the needs of your family. There isn’t an obvious choice for everyone, though a lot of families choose the dry pail for simplicity. Start simple with a dry pail, and move on to wet pail if you find that you have odor that is difficult to bear or control.

Tips

  • With both types of pails, your diapers are less likely to stain and your pail will be somewhat more fresh if you dump solids in the toilet before putting the diaper in the pail.
  • Any plastic bucket will work for a dry pail, though you may want to get one with a lid to control odors.
  • For a wet pail, either choose a locking pail or store pail out of reach of small children.
  • To avoid mildew, wash more frequently. Don’t leave diapers sitting for more than two days.
  • Be careful about anything you add to your diaper pail.