An old fashioned answer for a new-age problem…
This column is about pee and poo, basically.
It’s about our newest wee people in the world and what happens to their pee and poo.
If we gathered a group of young and older and old mothers in the room, the question of diaper and waste would be handled differently. My mother gathered up our waste in long, cotton diapers, folded three ways and then one way to form an envelope that ‘caught’ just about everything.
These devices were rinsed out, run through the washing machine, hand fed through the wringer and pinned to the clothes line. Sounds primative, but that’s what she did. I don’t believe my father ever participated in this ritual, or in the ritual that got the diapers to the washing machine in the first place.
My age group of mothers sat in the brink of change. Disposable diapers were just beginning their launch, promising a minimum of fuss and muss while the new mom, in the heady throes of the country’s first mandated maternity leaves juggled the demands of home and office. Myself, I preferred squares of absorbent flannellette swinging on the line. What drove me was commerce and the environment. My children’s father, my first husband (as I fondly call him) participated steadily in the ritual of diaper movement.
Call it modern if you like, but the disposable diaper and the boom of the baby boomers children have created more landfill waste with a longer lifespan than we could imagine. The anthropologists in centuries to come will be checking into our human pooper scoopers, for sure.
What’s so modern about this?
Lisa Wooldridge thinks there’s nothing modern, and little acceptable about the 50 or so diapers a week that a new baby will contribute to a landfill for the first two years of its life… that’s 5,200 longlived diapers for each child entering the ‘system’ in a community! As an environmental engineering technologist, she couldn’t tolerate the amount of garbage she was contributing to landfill when her first child was born.
She started to use cloth diapers. She loved them. Now the mother of two children, one still in diapers, Lisa is making her mark with Munchkin Bums, hand made cloth diapers. If you’ve looked at a cloth diaper these days, it is not one square of cloth… it’s a system! Panels, velcro, buttons, and inserts that let the diaper ‘grow’ with the baby. These things also have a $20 per price tag if you’re buying new.
So, Lisa has made her diapers with bamboo outer fabric, absorbent inserts and they are fitted in three different dizes. She also has two suppliers of rubber pants. Parents can choose their poly covers. Lisa has taken this one step farther and gone into business with her Munchkin Bums diaper service. She does a weekly pickup and drop off of diapers for her customers, picking up one diaper pail of ‘dirties’ and leaving a diaper pale of ‘cleans’ in its place.
A newborn baby’s parents will receive 70 diapers in a diaper pail a week with a twice weekly pickup. Though every baby is different, the average use is 50 diapers per week.
Her geographic area is Innisfil, Essa and Barrie and she’s offering home or workplace pickup and drop off. Cost? $20 per week. About the same cost as buying disposables.
“I have a few parents in Midland waiting until there are 10 families so it’s worth my while to service Midland,” says Lisa.
“Environmentally, this is so much better.” All in all, an affordable alternative for those looking beyond the poo and the pee.”
Munchkinbums, 705 431-9204, lisa@munchkinbums.ca, www.munchkinbums.ca.
Thanks, Lisa.