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The Price of Cloth Diapers - Significant Cost Benefits

By: Dawn Michelle

Several reasons come to mind for looking into alternatives to disposable diapers. But the two most striking features are the monetary and environmental benefits.
When learning about cloth diapers in the beginning, some might be stunned by the retail price of top of the line cloth diapers. Coth diapers may cost as much as $20 per diaper. Every baby requires needs 10 to 20 cloth diapers to head off the need to do too many loads of laundry each week. The cost at first can as high as $400. But that is the only the product price for 3-4 years, since cloth diapers can be used time and time again and can fit babies from 7 to 35 lbs.
What would be the financial benefit? Lets look at disposable diaper costs first:
An average baby uses about 8 disposable diapers per day at a cost of $0.30 per disposable diaper. Disposable diapers cost $875 per annum at this rate. If you extend that cost over the average length of time a baby is in diapers, say 3 years, the total cost for disposable diapers is $2,625!
Now for the cost of cloth diapers:
As mentioned above, the cost for 20 sizable and reusable cloth diapers, is $400.
That's pretty much it. How about the extra price of cleaning cloth diapers? Washing costs about $1. 50 per wash and you'll do about 3 per week or less which calculates to $235 per year x 3 years = $705. Over three years your total cost for cloth diapers is $1105.
The table below depicts the significant savings when using cloth diaper compared with disposable diapers over a three year period.
Disposable diapers: $2,625
Cloth Diapers: $1,105
Money saved by using Cloth Diapers: $1,520
================================
Money save annually: $ 506
The money saved is only the beginning. There are serious environmental benefits as well.
Environmental Factors
* A single baby alone can contribute 8,000 to 10,000 diapers to our growing landfills.
* It takes upwards of 500 years to decompose a disposable diaper, if left in open air and sunlight. In a landfill, the waste covering the diaper means that it will never decompose.
There is a law against disposing of feces in landfills, but the law is ignored in the case of disposable diapers. Disposable diapers that contain solid human waste leak viruses like polio and others into the groundwater supply instead of being taken care of at a sewage treatment facility.
Chlorinated plastics used to manufacture disposable diapers have generated dioxins, which have been linked to liver disease, immune system suppression, birth deformities, cancer and genetic abnormalities in laboratory animals.
Many families can help save the environment after considering the cost of disposable diapers, the potential health hazards to babies, and the environmental impact, while also benefiting from such alternatives. The cloth diaper option will save families money and help save the Earth.

Article Source: http://www.migdashboard.com

Dawn Michelle teaches parents about cloth diapers and other organic Earth friendly baby products. By presenting families with healthy and poison-free alternatives, she saves them money. www.BabySproutNaturals.com

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