What to do about baby

diaper services use less water and energy

SUSAN SCHWARTZ, The Gazette

In 1567, when James VI, later James I of England, was crowned King of Scotland, he was 13 months old. Had he been wearing disposable diapers, that were tossed into landfills like today, some still would not have decomposed completely, Tanya Ha writes in Greeniology: How to Live Well, Be Green and Make a Difference (Penguin Canada, $29).

Disposables are convenient - but at a price, says Sally Bevan, author of Pure Living: How to Detox Your Home (BBC Worldwide, $24.95). They're designed to keep wetness from baby's skin, but the plastic might encourage diaper rash. And the whiteness of disposables is usually achieved by chlorine bleach; their manufacture often produces as waste or byproducts mercury and dioxins, which are hazardous to the environment.

That said, chlorine-free and unperfumed disposables are available. At Co-op La Maison Verte, they cost about what Pampers do. If you make only one environmentally-friendly diaper decision, urges Bevan, it should be to switch to chlorine-free diapers.

Cloth diapers are cheaper than disposables and result in less waste. Cotton is a renewable resource, whereas the plastic in disposables is not. But non-organic cotton farming uses a high level of pesticides and fertilizers. About 25 per cent of all insecticides are used to make non-organic cotton, which represents just three per cent of the world's crops.

Although folded cloth diapers are more likely to leak than disposables, now there are molded diapers that look and work not unlike disposables.

Find cloth diapers in Montreal at Co-op La Maison Verte in N.D.G., Bummis (www.boutiquebummis.com) on the Plateau Mont Royal and Boutique la Mere Helene (www.merehelene.com) in LaSalle. Studies weighing the environmental impact of diapers have found that, factoring in material, energy and water used to make them as well as their disposal or reuse, cloth is preferable - but by a narrow margin, Ha writes.

The method with the least environmental impact, she says, is to use cloth diapers and have them laundered by a diaper service. Because such services launder on a large scale, they use less water and energy, proportionately, than you would washing them at home.

Diaper services are hardly ubiquitous in Montreal, though; Couches Loulou is the only service I could find. Julie Cousineau charges $20 to $25 a week for diaper service for a newborn, which amounts to 60 to 80 diapers. For older babies, it's between $15 and $21. She services the Montreal area, but not the West Island. Nothing to buy, nothing to soak: dirty diapers go into a pail provided by Cousineau. Her new number is (450) 474-3550.

More ecological than any diaper service is what a small but growing number of parents across North America are doing: potty-training their infants early. According to a recent page one story in the New York Times, those who practice the technique see it as more sanitary and more ecologically correct - and as a way to strengthen bonds between them and their babies. Information sessions on the technique are held in Montreal each month; the next one is on Friday, Nov. 18 at noon. For details, e-mail lisa@dfb.org; the website is www.diaperfreebaby.org.