Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
from birth to potty training. However, few parents today use only cloth
diapers. Most diaper-using households use disposable diapers, but some
parents use both types.
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Fifty-fi ve percent use both cloth and disposables,
33 percent use only disposables, and 12 percent use only cloth diapers.
An estimated 27.4 billion disposable diapers, weighing 3.4 million tons,
are used each year in the United States. Disposable diapers cost parents
around two dollars a day, roughly the same amount that a commercial
diaper service charges for handling cloth diapers.
Disposable diapers such as Pampers or Huggies, the best-selling
brands, contain 0.3 to 0.5 ounces of sodium polyacrylate, a superabsor-
bent solid polymer that can absorb up to 100 times its weight in liquid—
2 to 3 pounds (or 0.96 to 1.44 quarts) of urine. Of those who use cloth
diapers, 90 percent say they are concerned about the impact of dispos-
ables on the environment. And well they should be. The 20 billion dis-
posables used each year add 3.5 million tons of poop and plastic to
landfi lls. A diaper can take more than 500 years to decompose in a
landfi ll.
Cloth diapers are environmentally superior to disposables.
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Dispos-
ables use twenty times more raw materials, three times more energy, and
twice as much water as reusables. They generate sixty times more waste.
In addition, it requires 4.6 barrels of oil to produce one disposable
diaper, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
Toilet Paper
Related to the issue of cleaning human bottoms is toilet paper. The soft,
fl uffy toilet paper widely preferred in the United States for home use can
be made only from tree farms or by logging wild forests. Toilet paper
can easily be made from recycled paper, but only at the cost of a coarser
fi nal product. Manufacturers admit that the primary factor that keeps
them making toilet paper out of freshly cut trees is that standing trees
yield longer fi bers than recycled material does. Longer fi bers make for
softer, fl uffi er toilet paper. Plush toilet paper also requires more water
for its manufacture.
The popularity of plump, soft toilet paper is a distinctly American
phenomenon. Only fi ve percent of the toilet paper purchased in the
United States for home use is composed entirely of recycled fi bers. In
contrast, 20 percent of the at-home toilet paper manufactured in Europe
and Latin America includes recycled content. Customers in other coun-
tries are also more willing to accept a rougher toilet tissue. American
