Disposable Diapers

Over the past few years, with landfill sites around North America rapidly filling up to capacity and few alternative sites available, disposable diapers have become the target of increasing condemnation from parents, politicians and environmentalists, all roundly critical of this bulky, throwaway product.

In August, 1990, Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark, North American's two largest producers of "dispo diapers" (as one Greenpeacer calls them), were both slapped with Wastemaker Awards by Wastewatch, an environmental coalition based in Washington, D.C. These awards came just two months after the release of an American Gallup poll that showed a surprising number of consumers—close to half—favor taxing or even banning disposables altogether to protect the environment.

The manufacturers think they're getting—what else?—a bum rap. "We don't really know why disposable diapers became the lightning rod of public sentiment about garbage," said Procter & Gamble's Robert Greene recently in Advertising Age magazine. Greene is director of the Paper Section of P & G's Research and Development department, headquartered in Cincinnati. "Even though we're [that is, disposable diapers] only one to two percent of the total solid waste stream, we were singled out as the problem."

"Only" 1 or 2 percent translates into a staggering twenty billion soggy and soiled plastic-backed disposables making their way into Canadian and American landfill sites every year. Aside from newspapers and beverage and food containers, no other single consumer product adds as much to our bloated solid waste stream.

Still, the disposable diaper will go down in history as one of the greatest success stories in the history of consumerism, dubious as that distinction may be. After a modest start in the 1940s, disposables gathered steam in the 1960s and have steadily eaten into a market once completely "owned" by reusable cloth diapers. They now account for a whopping 85 percent of the total market share. Procter & Gamble maintains its North American sales are strong, but we're convinced that the tide is turning once again in favor of cloth, at least in Canada, even though definitive market surveys are not available (at least not to impecunious book authors unable to afford several thousand dollars for A.C. Nielsen data). International figures, however, continue to skyrocket as Procter & Gamble pushes its disposable diapers into uncharted and, until now, unexploited markets including South America, Saudi Arabia and the Pacific Rim. P & G's worldwide sales rose a hefty 15 percent in 1990.

Convenience is the big selling point of disposables, and many parents are hooked soon after their baby is born. The addiction begins in the maternity wards of countless hospitals, when nursery staff immediately swaddle newborns in Pampers, Huggies or any one of several competitors. It was once common for diaper companies to make sweet deals with many North American hospitals, but this practice has diminished somewhat. Since the solid waste issue reared its ugly head, hospitals are now thinking more conscientiously about the end result of their great "deals."

But manufacturers still consider new parents fair game. In some hospitals, baby kits that contain free diaper samples and discount coupons are bestowed upon parents when the mother and infant are discharged, and the promotions continue long after their homecoming. The very use of disposables in a hospital implies a medical endorsement of the product that undoubtedly influences new parents—the perception is that hospitals ought to know what's best for newborns.

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