A Dark Side of Reusable Cotton Diapers

We love cotton. We value its durability. We appreciate how it grows softer with age and repeated washing. We love how it holds razor sharp creases when we iron and starch it. We also love how it looks so comfortably wrinkled when we do not bother with ironing it. We even know and grow selective about the national origins and thread-counts in our cotton, believing that Egyptian outperforms the domestic variety as a straight flush beats a pair of deuces.



We love cotton so much we conveniently forget it has an evil dark side. Few crops wreak as much environmental havoc as cotton. Our beloved cotton, still the fabric-of-choice in more than 90% of reusable diapers, uses more water than any other cash crop. It requires more chemical fertilizer and pesticide than any other major crop. And cotton more completely depletes soil's nutrients and minerals than almost any other plant on the planet. Cotton farmers no longer rotate their crops to replenish the soil, because they cannot afford to leave fields fallow for years at a time. Instead, they plow in chemical additives-especially heavy concentrations of nitrogen-to replace what cotton sucked-out. Just one little fun fact about cotton will make you think twice about reusable diapers: Cotton alone accounts for fully 25% of the world's pesticide use. Well, okay, a second fun fact to reinforce the first. No other crop has caused as many large-scale ecological disasters as cotton.



Cotton still ranks among the world's very best fabrics, but it also ranks among the world's nastiest plants. Some weeds have a lot more benefit for the environment and for us than cotton ever could.



Cotton's benefits probably mitigate its problems, but you can take a few simple steps to make sure your reusable diapers do not create more problems for your Mother Earth. Although you will pay more, you should buy only organically grown cotton. The more consumers insist on the no-chemical variety, the more supply and demand will even out, bringing down the cost. Or you may insist on a cotton-and-hemp blend, the latest advance in diaper fabrics. Hemp does little environmental harm, and when the novelty of the cotton-hemp blend diminishes, the price will come down.



Ashley J Michaels is an home economist. For more excellent tips on Reusable Cotton Diapers please visit http://reusablediapers.us/