Compostable Diapers

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  • Compostable Diapers?

    Dec 17, 2018

    We are expecting our first baby in March and I'm researching greener alternatives to single-use disposable plastic diapers.  I think a compostable diaper delivery service like Earth Baby sounds great. Has anyone used them recently? How is their service? Do the diapers work well? Would love to hear what other families are doing! Thanks!

    Congratulations!

    We use cloth diapers through Tiny Tots diaper service (based in the South Bay) and they are great.  They deliver all over the Bay Area.  We've never tried compostable diapers mostly because (1) the cloth work just fine, (2) I'm of the theory (albeit unconfirmed by me) that cloth diapers use fewer resources in the log run since you are reusing the same material over and over again rather than spending resources/packaging to create new ones, and (3) you must use a diaper service to compost diapers correctly (most local garbage collections categorize compostable diapers as trash due to the human waste element and cannot be put in the green bucket - but check with your trash provider).  If you're up for it, you don't even need the diaper service with cloth - you can just wash them yourself.

    I gave those a try and they gave my baby terrible rashes. They are much less absorbent and even with very frequent changes she got diaper rash. No other diapers (non-compostable) gave her that issue. Wish the compostable ones worked for us but that was not the case. 

    I'm sure several others with chime in with the same response but Earth Baby IS great. We love what they do, what they represent, and how easy they make it to be environmentally sound. I'd say the diapers do about 85-90% of what the diapers filling up landfills can do (and I'm glad they don't have the weird, fake perfumed smell of disposables). My husband and I feel the trade off is well worth it keeping plastic diapers that take decades to break down out of landfills. Having them pick up/deliver diapers to the door has worked out really well and even the packaging the diapers come in gets picked up with the diapers.

    We adjust our order each week as needed for wipes and diapers (though they offer a host of other products). I really, *really* wish I could convince more parents to try out Earth Baby since it's our all of our kiddos who will ultimately pay the price for landfills and plasticizing of our environment. They even send a packet of free diapers so you can try it out first.

    We got an Uppi diaper pail for the compost bags needed and then use the paper bag they deliver the diapers in to absorb moisture in the bottom of the pail and replace it weekly (or anytime we take the diapers out).

    We also carry a Ziploc bag in our diaper bag to take home and compost diapers changed on the go.

    Thank you for asking and congrats! (Our second baby also arrives this March...So soon!)

    We use Earth Baby and absolutely love it! The Naty diapers are amazing so absorbent and good for sensitive skin and the service is fantastic (I'll occasionally switch to my parent's house in a different city in the Bay Area and then back to my home when we come back and they have no problem with it). According to them it is greener than cloth but I didn't double check the numbers. I also like that if we are traveling, I can just toss them and not have to bring them home. I highly recommend these diapers and the service. You must get the diapers through them (although they are also available on amazon etc) and you must compost through their service since they need a specific type of composting. 

    We've been using the Earth Baby service since our son was born and overall really like it! The service is consistent and the diapers mostly work fine, though we just moved up to to size 5 and I have noticed they seem to rip a little more easily. One big note is that we use regular disposable diapers for bedtime/overnight (our son sleeps ~11 hours)  -- the compostable ones don't cut it. 

    We've used Earth Baby for two years. Every single delivery has been on time and correct. Customer service is very responsive. Diapers work well. They feel slightly stiffer than Pampers and we've recently switched to Pampers for overnight diapers as we found the Earth Baby ones couldn't hold quite as much, but generally absolutely no issue with performance of the compostable diapers. All told we end up spending about $140/month for garbage-can-sized compostable bags for the diaper pail, diapers, compostable wipes, and the service fee (for one child).

    We also use tiny tots, but their combo option which allows us to use both cloth diapers and they deliver us compostable diapers. We tend to use cloth during the day and compostable at night when we want to make changes quicker. We throw everything in the same bag and put it out for tiny tots to pick up once a week. So far it’s been fantastic. 

    Hi!

    I found that gPants by gDiapers worked really well. They are cloth diapers with compostable, flushable liners. I would just remove the liner, put it in the compost, and wash the gPants in the washer. They can also be put in the dryer. They're convenient, because they don't require pick up/drop off, and becaue anything that gets on them easily comes off in the wash.

    We have been using Earth Baby for our now 8-month old since she was about 2 months old.  We love it!  They are like the diaper fairy, taking away our dirty diapers and bringing us whatever we need every week, without having to step foot into a store.  We don't have a laundry machine in our apartment, so cloth diapers were not going to work for us, and the thought of regular disposables clogging up our landfills was horrible. I have been super pleased with the service so far.  

    Here are the pros and cons of the service/products from my own experience: In terms of the diapers themselves, they are not the softest, a bit more papery in texture than typical pampers, but definitely not uncomfortable.  Our baby seems to like them just fine. We find them to be just as absorbent as any other diapers, generally keeping a full-night's worth of pee in place without leaks. Also, we have never had a problem with diaper rash while using them (with the exception of a small rash once, but it cleared in a day).  Like any diaper, blowouts do happen occasionally, they are not some miracle cure for too much poop, haha. The one thing to note is that their diapers do not have wetness indicators, so as a first time parent I wasn't sure if I would notice that the diapers were wet.  In hindsight, the whole idea of a wetness indicator just seems so silly, as you can tell how wet the diaper is just by feeling how squishy it is! Also, at first I wasn't too thrilled about the selection of wipes that they had to offer, but once I used the unscented wipes I find them to be great. 

    While the service is great, their website can be a little tricky to navigate at first.  For example, I had to call their customer service people to ask them how to add different recurring items to my list.  But once you know where to go and how it works, it is a breeze. They are also super accommodating about things like vacation scheduling, or needing to exchange unopened diapers packs for a different size. 

    Overall, I would definitely recommend.  It is incredibly convenient, and you are really helping the environment!

    Congrats! We also use Tiny Tots and they've been great. We started with cloth/compostable combo and progressed to just compostable. Couldn't be happier with it. We're down to just one pull-up at night, but still using the service until we let go of that last one. Feeling good that almost none of our diapers have ended up in a landfill. On weekend trips, we'd collect them in a compostable bag inside a trash bag to bring home. As a new first time parent, it was a huge boon to have a diaper service.

    We usecloth diapers as a greener and cheaper alternative. (No experience with compostable, sorry!) Cloth diapers tend to scare people but I’m a huge proponent. It’s a higher upfront cost (depending on style/brand you’re likely to spend $10-20 per diaper) but you only spend the money once and in the long run it’s much cheaper. We wash them at home in our machine every other day and have not noticed any significant increase in our water bill. You can also get them washed through a service but I think that destroys most of the cost savings. As an added bonus, in my experience cloth diapers are much better at containing leaks/blowouts than disposable. Good luck with whatever you choose!

    We have been using Earth Baby since my daughter (second child) was born in March. I love the service. The company is very responsive to efforts to reach them (either phone or email). They use Naty diapers, which are not QUITE as secure and absorbent as the big name brands (but we had plenty of blow outs when using those while traveling, too) but you do have some sacrifice for composting, and I feel better about putting my baby into healthier diapers. I personally have significant climate anxiety which keeps me up at night, so I appreciate being able to minimize the major impact of diapering. We chose compostable over cloth because water seems the most precious resource in our part of the world, and when I researched it wasn't clear one was definitively environmentally better. It would probably be cheaper to launder cloth diapers at home, but I do so much laundry already I wasn't up for that.

    The service itself is not much more complicated than putting out your garbage on trash day. We have a recurring order and every once in a while I add an extra pack of diapers, wipes or even baby shampoo. They drop off your order every week when they pick up the soiled diapers. It's been a smooth experience and in 8 months, we've never had a problem.

    Hello! We use earthbaby now and love it. We started when my son was maybe 3 or 4 months and are still using them, he is 22 months now. I think the diapers work great and rarely leak. I think we waited until he had a bit more chunk to his body before we started with the service because their smaller diapers didn’t fit as well. So we just used disposables for the first 3 months. With my older son we did tiny tots and then we started washing our own cloth diapers.  That was also fine, but obviously more work. Earthbaby customer service is excellent and it is reassuring to know that the  diapers are not ending up in a landfill. If compostable was not an option I would have done cloth again. Having second kid and working I just didn’t want any extra work.  Happy to answer any other questions -

    I will second that vote of confidence for Tiny Tots! We use their cotton diaper service, they also have compostable diapers as part of their service as well. We only use disposable diapers overnight because they tend to feel less wet on the baby's skin, but otherwise the cotton works great. We don't have laundry in our unit so it's extra nice to have someone to take the dirty diapers away for us. Be warned, if you end up using the compostable diapers, and I've heard this is true of the Naty brand as well as the bamboo ones that we tried, the sizing is way off. Our baby didn't fit in the "size 1" diapers until he was 15 pounds, even though they are supposedly OK for newborns. We had a lot of leaks before we realized this was the case. 

    I have experience with Earth Baby. The company is great. Customer service is outstanding - friendly, responsive, helpful. Delivery / pick-up is reliable. Unfortunately the size 1 diapers did not fit my son well. We currently have our account on hold (another convenience) and will definitely try again when he is bigger. (A friend of mine also had the same experience with the size 1 diapers but the larger sizes work for her daughter.) I highly recommend giving them a chance. If you get a referral the first delivery is super discounted, if not free. (Feel free to contact me if you need a referral.) or just buy a package of naty diapers yourself and see if they work. Good luck!

    Second vote here for Tiny Tots -- for the last 2 1/2 years, we've done "combo" service, cloth + compostable (cloth at home during the day, compostables at night/with sitters/out and about), and they have maybe the best customer service of any company I've ever worked with. If I forget to put our diapers out on pickup day, they will give us a full week's "loan" no questions asked; if our daughter starts soaking through her jammies they have a list of suggestions on how to troubleshoot; if something looks weird (like we're only supposed to receive 10 new diapers in a given week) they will always email to check in; and generally they are great, friendly folks. Will definitely use again if we have another baby!

    I love Earth Baby and their service is great - super easy to use website and they  exchange sizes, recyle diaper/wipe packing for you.  Their Naty by Nature diapers work really well. We have been nothing but impressed so far.

    We use Earth Baby for our daughter who is 2 months old now and really like it. They have great customer service. The diapers work well, though we had some issues at first because our daughter was so small at birth, but they will work with you to get you the right size. The one thing to know is that you have to be a bit more careful about getting the diaper centered as they don't have quite as much stretch as disposables. Our daughter has very sensitive skin and we haven't had any ossues with the diapers, which was a concern. Great service with pickup and delivery reliable and it is easy to change your order as you figure out how many packs of diapers you need per week, etc. We really love being able to be more green with diapers while still having the convenience of disposables. Hope this helps and congratulations!

    We're expecting our first baby any day now, and have similar questions to yours about diapering options. We've been told to not stress too much about this initially - there's a chance one type of diapering system (disposable, compostable, cloth) will work better for our baby. A bunch of the advice we've received is to wait and see what our baby's bottom works best with... although I'm not sure how that translates to the real world. 

    Regardless, we've purchased a few small packages of disposable newborn & size 1 diapers to get us through the first day or so at home. My husband will buy more that first week to keep us covered. We have a bunch of cloth diaper hand-me-downs, but are generally intimidated and unenthusiastic about going the cloth route. I do expect my eco-conscious husband will demand we try compostable diapers pretty quickly, once we see how much waste we're creating. A friend used Tiny Tots compostable service and recommended it. They come and pick up the used diapers and compost them in their own processing facility. I imagine this will be where we land with diapering; it seems like a nice middle ground for convenience and the environment. 

    My child has been out of diapers for a few years but we did use Earthbaby and I really liked it.  I found it to be really convenient.  I liked that they were dropped off and picked up and that i could add other things like wipes or lotions/creams.  I also liked that if we were out and about we could toss them just like regular disposable.  It got even better when her day care started using the earth baby service too.

    Good luck with with your first baby!  

    We have a 16 month old and have been using Earthbaby since she was a couple of months old. We were signed up from the start but since she was born early, she didn’t fit their diapers for a while. 

    We love Earthbaby!! They are reliable and flexible and very friendly if you need to call them. We chose compostable over cloth because my understanding is that living in a drought prone area makes constant diaper washing (and my friend who used compostable out of state washed diapers a lot) more wasteful than composting. I have even read that resource use between cloth and disposable is basically a draw! This may not be true for cloth diaper services though since they use higher efficiency equipment than we have in our homes. 

    Congratulations! I’m sure you will find what works best for you and you family. 

    I use Andy's Pandys - they are biodigradable and are very absorbent! Definitely recommend these!

RE:

Unfortunately I don't think there are any left in the Bay Area. Did want to clarify, though, that if you want compostable diapers to be composted, you must use a service. Compostable diapers can't be placed in food/yard waste bins for cities that offer that service, and can only be put into the garbage. San José has single-stream garbage so pulls the food scraps out for composting, but they have no way to know that your used diaper is compostable so would not be pulling diapers out. So even though the industrial composter is the same company that the city uses, you're paying for a different service/outcome. You might consider a compostable service for the early months with a switch towards home-washing as your baby gets older. We used a cloth service for the first six months before doing it ourselves and found that was a good balance for our family (since older babies use many fewer diapers!)

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OK to put gDiapers in the garden compost? Jan 2012

We just started using gDiapers with the compostable inserts. I am planning on flushing the poopy inserts and composting the wet ones. Alas, when I called the Alameda County Industries office (for my city), they said they do not take compostable diapers in the green bin because the facility they contract with isn't set up to process diapers. I privately think they can process gDiapers just fine but I don't want to throw something into the green bin that the city has stated they won't take. So I'm left with doing home composting. Anyone have experience doing this with gDiapers? What works and what doesn't? I found a blog online that said that diapers overwhelmed their worm bin (too much fiber) and even with a hot compost, the ratio of food scraps to diaper didn't work out. There were just too many diapers and not enough food scraps. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I live in Alameda.


It's true that the municipal green waste services in the East Bay aren't set up to compost human waste---please don't put your gDiapers in, because the compost is distributed to home gardeners who may be using it for vegetable gardens! Can you just flush both the wet and poopy inserts? If not and you are committed to composting diapers, you need to get a composting service that has an industrial composting facility designed to break down human waste (and to supply the resulting compost to places that will use it for non-food uses). There are two that I know of: Tiny Tots Diaper Service and Earth Baby. Tiny Tots uses EcoGenesis diapers and Earth Baby uses Nature BabyCare. We have Tiny Tots and love them; so far we have had great performance from their diapers, and they have terrific customer service. Another diaper composter


There's a different process and set of rules for legally compositing human waste, and the county is not set up for doing this. I believe the compost has to be at a significantly higher temperature, more concern about contamination/illnesses, etc. I'm sure someone more educated on this than myself will illuminate the problem.

There is, however, a special -- and fantastic! -- composting diaper service that's been in business in the Bay Area for some time: Earth Baby http://www.earth-baby.com I know you've signed up to use gDiapers, but if composting and a small environmental impact is important to you, consider switching. To ensure the integrity of their compost, you have to use Nature Babycare compostable diapers and wipes and buy these products through their web site. I've found their prices to be reasonable. It's not the cheapest, but I'm lucky enough to be in a financial position in which I can afford a little more to support this service and their goals. I also buy Nature Babycare diapers and wipes elsewhere from time to time when pressed for whatever reason, and it's fine. They don't monitor you, but the point is to keep their compost input consistent and support their business.

The service picks up the dirty diapers and drops off new diapers and wipes (and other products you might purchase through them) once a week. I think you can set up more frequent service if needed but am not sure. I have two children in diapers and have found once a week is just fine. They sell their compost for large projects, like roadside landscaping. Give them a call! Composting Diaper Satisfied Mom


The city can't compost diapers because their composting does not reach high enough temperatures to kill any bad bacteria/diseases that might be in human feces. The diapers will still decompose, but with leftover germs which could make people who used the finished compost sick. The same goes with home composting. You can compost diapers through this company, but you have to buy their diapers and wipes: http://www.earth-baby.com/home.php My friend does it and loves it. Andi