Cloth diaper we do butt sometimes the poo, oh the poo, oh the poo oh the poo and doo doo…
With Chicken Little I was somewhat militant about cloth diapering, which meant that I frequently was carrying soiled stinkies around with me because I needed to take them home to wash. It meant that my diaper bag really only had room in it for, well, for diapers. When Toddler was born I softened a little. I’m still committed to reducing my environmental footprint but overnight we use disposable. If we have a sitter we use disposable. And if we have a lot of errands to run we use disposable. At first my goal was to use no more than 7 a week but lately we’ve been on the go a lot and I noticed our disposable diaper consumption has increased. I’m starting to save up some garbage for the next week because the can is already full.
So last week I finally broke down and tried G Diapers. They are an interesting concept. The filling looks like the huge maxi pads of my teenage years that fit inside a trim little cover. They contain fewer chemicals than other diapers (although any filling that can absorb that much liquid cannot be entirely natural) but they break down in 50-120 days as opposed to 500 YEARS. That’s right, I said 500 years. That is how long it takes a regular disposable diaper to breakdown. Let alone the added “landmass” we are created in refuse. If we could only take that garbage landmass and add it back to the eroding coastline we are experiencing through climate change but I digress.
One interesting thing about the G Diaper is that it’s flushable. In order to flush it you tear open the outer cover of the pad and shake out the inside material. I tried this with great trepidation the first time but it flushed ok. My trepidation was rooted in the fact that we are a one crapper household, baby bjorn potty notwithstanding. While we were renovating the bathroom I went for 3 days without a toilet while 6 months pregnant so I’m a little nervous when it comes to doing without functional plumbing.
Tonight Toddler threw me a curveball in his G-diaper and for some reason I didn’t just toss it in the garbage. Without thinking I started ripping the outside and tried “shaking” the inner contents out without losing the smeared on contents, or the contents of my stomach. Of course I was holding the insert by the cleanest edge I could find, trying to pull the inner section out. The closer I got to the unsavory section the more stubborn and rooted the insert became. It was halfway out and I reasoned that what with swirling around in it’s little whirlpool it should finish coming out on it’s own so I gave it a flush. It looked like it flushed just fine.
About an hour later my husband approached me, tactfully asking if I knew of any reason the toilet might be overflowing. Well, there was one I could think of. The toilet was hopelessly plugged, even after about 10 minutes of furious plunging. Suddenly my husband remembered that the natural alternative to certain death for all wildlife as we know it Drano and Liquid Plumber also worked on toilets. He shook a little into the bowl and 10 minutes later it was completely unclogged. The particular brand we purchased is called Earth Enzymes but there are other natural enzyme products out there as well.
And the Earth Day moral of the story is (1) be sure to follow all directions when someone is telling you how to flush a large bulky object down your toilet and (2) always have a backup plan, or Earth Enzymes on hand just in case.
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