posted 7 years ago
I just realized something. People often mention the environmental impact of washing diapers, especially when comparing the environmental impact of cloth diapers versus disposables. "All those loads of laundry!" They say. Well, let's say you wash a load of diapers every other day. That's about 60 gallons, maybe a bit more or less depending on if you prewash, etc. A high efficiency machine probably takes less.
Now, think about using the toilet. Each flush is 3.5 gallons if you have a high efficiency toilet. An average person uses the toilet 6-7 times per day. Let's round that up to 8 for potty trained kids. 8 x 3.5 is 28 gallons. That's in one day. Two days of potty usage is 56 gallons. It takes almost just as much water to flush the toilet than it does to wash the diapers!
This really stunned me. Obviously, the people complaining about the environmental impact of that water (not talking about the electricity to heat it), really should stop complaining because it works out to be about as much as them using the toilet (because I'm pretty sure the people saying we should use disposables because they require less water, are not people saving their pee in buckets to water their plants, or letting the yellow "mellow" and only flushing the "brown," or using composting toilets, etc).
This also makes me wonder about ways in which we can reduce the amount of water--and electricity--to wash diapers and other laundry.
(1) Hang drying clothes to dry, rather than running the dryer.
(2) Using flat diapers, rather than prefolds or other inserts, because they come clean easier and don't require as much washing. I seriously have a really hard time keeping diapers free from ammonia build up, and the inserts are the first to get it.
(3) Using flat diapers, rather than prefold or other inserts, because they DRY a lot faster. If you have to use the dryer, they reduce the drying time a lot. And, if you only have a short amount of good drying weather due to your climate, they can actually dry outside in time (for instance, during a lot of the year, the sun set behind my trees around 4:00 or sooner. One that happens, the dew sets in and get my diapers wet again. So, if the diapers can't dry in a few hours, I have to finish them in the dryer, which is a pain.)
(4) Using cold water to wash. I don't know about you, though, but the cold water does not really get my diapers clean.
(5) Looking into diapering materials that require less water and electricity to produce. I'm thinking that PUL covers probably require more resources than wool ones (especially wool ones purposed from old sweaters), but I could be wrong.
Anyone else have thoughts on water conservation and laundry?