I was in the supermarket the other day mulling over some talcum powder when I noticed a modestly dressed young Balinese couple with a small baby nearby. They pulled two packets of Pampers off the shelf and added them to their shopping cart. Later I followed them into the parking lot, where they mounted an elderly motorcycle and drove away.
A terrible thought occurred to me. Ordinary Indonesians think it is modern and advanced to use single-use diapers.
There are all kinds of pretty awful implications here. Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world. Granted most of these folk won’t be buying disposable diapers any time soon, but enough will to establish the product as mainstream. The manufacturers must be rubbing their hands with glee. Environmentalists everywhere will be falling on their swords.
Single use/disposable diapers (SUDs) have been around for a generation now, long enough to establish what they do to infant health and the environment. Let’s start with a newborn baby, a fragile scrap of life whose tender skin is immediately exposed to polyethylene and a synthetic crystal called polyacrylate, which was the material found in tampons responsible for the sometimes fatal Toxic Shock Syndrome. These are just two of the questionable chemicals babies are exposed to in single use diapers, 24 hours a day for about 2 years.
The US Consumer Products Safety Commission receives hundreds of complaints about babies with rashes and allergic reactions due to exposure to the plastics, chemicals and perfumes in SUDs. Deaths from asphyxiation have been reported. Parents also complain of skin irritation, vomiting, fever and staph infections attributed to the chemicals and plastic in these diapers. Wearing SUDs causes increased scrotal temperatures in baby boys, which is now being linked to decreased fertility in the so-called developed countries. Doctors report that baby girls whose parents use SUDs have more infections than those who use cloth, because bacteria grows more quickly in the warm, humid environment of non-breathing plastic. Some studies also link the rising incidence of asthma with single use diapers.
So SUDs are not good for babies. They’re also not good for their parent’s wallets. The average child will wear between 5,000 and 10,000 SUDs before being toilet trained, at a cost of about US$ 2500. Indonesian prices are lower, but keeping a baby in disposable diapers here costs the same as a new motorcycle, about Rp 11,000,000. Superior cloth diapers and covers come in at a fraction of that cost and can last through two babies. The single use diaper market is worth $400 million a year in Canada alone – a relatively small country of 30 million people with a low birth rate.
Single use diapers have been a disaster for the environment. A billion trees are felled around the world each year to make the ‘fluff pulp’ in the absorbent layer of the diaper. It takes about 800 pounds of ‘fluff pulp’ and 280 pounds of plastic to diaper a baby in SUDs over 2 years, versus 22 pounds of cotton for cloth diapers. Each baby in single use diapers for two years uses 4.5 trees and generates between 1.5 and 2 tons of solid waste.
SUDs are the third largest consumer item after newspapers and food and beverage containers. An estimated 20 billion SUDs are thrown out every year in North America alone, a municipal solid waste nightmare of bulky, non-biodegradable material and untreated sewage. A used single use diaper may take as long as 500 years to break down. In its initial two weeks in the landfill it’s a breeding ground for bacteria and viruses, including the live polio vaccine, that leaches into the groundwater and threatens the health of sanitation workers and wildlife.
Germany and Austria have become world leaders in dealing with this issue. A quick trip to the calculator showed city managers in these countries that every child wearing SUDs was costing the city $400 in disposal fees. One solution was to subsidize the cost of cloth diapers, and the use of them in these cities has risen from almost zero to 40%.
What’s the alternative? Cloth diapers have come a long way from the flat, fold-it-yourself and prick-your-finger-on-the-pins variety of my distant baby-sitting days. They are now contoured and form-fitting with elasticized waist and legs and velcro or snap fastenings. They MAY also feature flushable liners, which brings us very close to the ‘no excuses’ category. Once the liner and payload have gone down the loo, there’s nothing to do but pop the nappy in a lidded pail with a sanitizing solution until there’s enough to fill the washing machine.
Brenda Ritchmond, one of the founders of the popular Andalan/Bali Buddha health food outlet in Ubud, is now diapering her third baby in soft, breathable, natural cotton diapers. "It’s very disturbing that Pampers have become so popular in Indonesia," she says. "Some of my friends, both Indonesians and Europeans, are spending up to Rp 450,000 a month for disposable diapers. They all have washing machines and pembantus, and modern cloth diapers are easy enough to clean. There’s hardly any excuse not to use them."
"The used diapers are often disposed of here by pouring KEROSENE over them and setting them on fire, releasing all kinds of toxic compounds. We have a big enough garbage issue already. Imagine the waste management problems if single use diapers became popular in Indonesia — it doesn’t bear thinking about."
Brenda has developed an attractive, breathable, water-resistant cover for cloth diapers which lasts through approximately two babies and wholesales from just Rp 8,000 each. Larger stores have declined to stock these until now, however, since they make so much more money from single use diapers than cloth. Brenda is now planning to sell them from warungs. She welcomes inquiries from individuals and retail outlets. She’d also like to develop a local cloth diaper that is thicker and better shaped than the ones currently available here. Anyone interested in partnering with her in this potentially lucrative initiative, please get in touch. Contact Brenda at djasanda@yahoo.com
What are single use diapers good for? Corporate profits – period. The few moments of convenience we gain by using a disposable diaper come at an unacceptably high price, which is paid by our environment and our children.
