Life Cycle Studies Of Diapers

If you're trying to compare the environmental impact of cloth versus disposable diapers, don't look for guidance to the so-called independent life-cycle studies—they're simply misleading. The American National Association of Diaper Services, Procter & Gamble and the diaper manufacturers' arm of the American pulp and paper industry have all sponsored this type of study. Guess which studies favor disposables and which give the nod to cloth? You don't have to be a genius to figure out that only results favorable to the sponsor see the light of day. William Franklin, author of the study financed by the American Paper Institute's Diaper Manufacturers' Group, said as much at a one-day disposable diaper seminar in Toronto—that several of his own client's studies are gathering dust on a shelf because they didn't benefit the sponsor's product or service.

Still, disposable diaper companies are milking the results of favorable life-cycle analyses for all they're worth. Procter & Gamble's "six of one, half a dozen of the other" ad suggests that, environmentally, it's a toss-up between cloth and disposable diapers. While disposable diapers add more garbage to landfills and eat up more raw materials in their manufacture, the ad says, cloth consumes "significantly" more water, energy and fuel, and causes a greater amount of air and water pollution.

The diaper manufacturers' studies pay scant attention to the squandering of raw materials to make disposables, or the consequences of cutting down trees and processing them into pulp fiber. Meanwhile, they exaggerate the impact of cloth diapers by taking into account every conceivable factor, including the energy needed to make the plastic bucket used to hold the soiled diapers! Calculations of energy consumption are another key to the erroneous conclusion that there is no clear environmental winner when cloth and disposables square off. The greatest drain from home laundering is the electricity and gas used to heat the water and run the washer and dryer. The studies assume that home laundering consumes a certain amount of energy, but no one has ever actually examined home laundering practices. The conclusions aren't truly conclusions at all—they're just speculation.

The study by Carl Lehrburger, paid for by the cloth diaper service association, says that diaper services use one-third of the energy required for disposables. Washing reusables at home consumes 60 percent of the energy used for disposables, mostly in the energy- intensive manufacturing process—yet another case where a sponsored study finds results favorable to, yes, the sponsor.

Victoria, B.C., municipal politician Carol Pickup says that any report commissioned by an organization with a vested interest "has no validity." She would like to see an independent body, such as a government agency, do a similar study, unfettered by biases. At its best, an independent "life-cycle" analysis will describe real, verifiable environmental costs associated with the manufacture and use of a product from "cradle to grave." Trouble is, says Hannah Holmes of Garbage magazine, who has looked closely at all these analyses, the private sector is the only group with the money to sponsor the studies.

The closest we came to finding objectivity was a scientific critique of two diaper life-cycle studies. Both claimed there is little difference in the environmental impact of cloth versus disposables, and (in case you needed to be told!) both were commissioned by makers of disposables. This critique, prepared for the Women's Environmental Network in Britain by an independent consulting firm, concluded that in the areas of energy use, raw materials, wastewater effluent and domestic solid waste, cloth diapers win by a substantial margin each time.

Canada's federal government obviously agrees, much to the chagrin of disposable diaper manufacturers. By fall, 1991, nine brands of cloth diapers sold in Canada had earned the EcoLogo, the government's stamp of approval for products and services doing the least damage to the environment. Only cloth diapers washed at home and diaper services qualify for the logo. Under the rules, wash-at-home diapers must be made of 100 percent reusable materials and survive at least seventy-five trips through the family washing machine. Environment Canada feels that the environmental benefits of good diaper services actually outperform home-laundering—they conserve resources by using less water, energy and detergent.

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