Beyond Cloth Diapers - Green Toileting For Adults

For people out there that have never used cloth diapers this may come as a real shock, but for those that have, you probably have either seen or used cloth baby wipes. You use them, toss them in your diaper pail or wet bag and then run them through the wash. Wallypop takes it to the next logical step. In addition to selling reasonable priced cloth napkins, hankies, menstrual pads, cloth shopping bags, breast pads, diapers and baby slings, the staple products of many home operated natural living sites, Wallypop offers cloth family wipes (toilet paper) and asks the question if it's good enough for your baby, isn't it good enough for you? I'd think any user of cloth infant products would feel the same way. For those of us with no children, I admit it can be a bit of a leap, especially for #2, but the average toilet visit is not a #2 visit, and most of the toilet paper women use is for urine, which is sterile and generally does not have much of an odor. Not to mention if you "let it mellow" which is an excellent water saving practice, you know that the biggest problem is the collection of toilet paper you get in the bowl. Once you eliminate the toilet paper flushes you will find you save a lot more water, especially if there are a number of women in your household.

I took a look at some of my feminine products - cloth pads, sea sponges - all much grosser than a cloth with a little pee on it. I thought about how many recycled paper towels I have thrown away because one of my dogs had an accident or my female was in heat. I wipe that up with a cloth, so I finally got up the guts to order some of the soft flannel wipes (they are also available in hemp and sherpa). They are very thick and similar in size and weight to a pot holder. They are much softer than many brands of toilet paper and I never have to worry about soaking through or tearing. Granted, there are brands of regular toilet paper that are very thick and absorbant, but they use a lot of paper to get that thickness, don't have as much to a roll and are therefore not very eco-friendly. All right - I still haven't gotten there for a #2 visit and my husband doesn't use them at all due to the obvious biological differences. For now, I set the wipe bag along with the Seventh Generation toilet paper and Natracare organic wipes and everyone is happy.

So where do you store a soiled cloth wipe? I like the wet bags people use for diapers, also available at a reasonable price from Wallypop for the upstairs bathroom, and I toss the ones from the downstairs bathroom right in the soaking container I keep for my menstrual pads. Since I pre-clean them with Bio-Kleen oxygen bleach and Bac-Out, I can launder them in a mesh bag like pantyhose or menstrual pads. If you still can't stand the thought of washing them with other clothes, use a hand washer or a low cycle with just the wipes and any pads you may need to clean. Ultimately, you will save a lot of money on yet another product that you flush away (and if you use toilet paper to wipe your nose, you can always buy some soft cloth hankies to take its place).

Another unique product Wallypop sells is their cloth sandwich baggies and wraps. Since there is no way to make plastic bags and wrap eco-friendly, these products are really important and I'm shocked that I haven't seen them elsewhere. There are alternate products like this natural waxed paper or these PVC and plasticizer free plastic bags that are better for you by eliminating harmful chemicals, but at the end of the day you still have plastic or paper being consumed and discarded. Even these compostable food storage products consume resources and create manufacturing waste. I'm not saying reusable cloth products will ever replace plastic bags completely - for long term storage you still have to have something airtight, but if you pack a sandwich for work or school or want to carry some cookies or crackers along in the car (and don't want to waste money and resources and generate waste by purchasing single serve packets), washable and reusable bags and wrappers that last for years and don't generate waste are the way to go.

Finally, for those reading this thinking how strange it is that I use and recommend so many cloth products, how gross it is to deal with food scraps, snot, pee and blood and/or how much time it must take in maintenance, remember that the concept of disposable items, unnecessary packaging, and single use items is largely a mid 1800's to present concept, and one that has done our species, our planet and the other species forced to share the planet with us nothing but harm. For the millions of years that humans have existed before the 1900's people tried to conserve and reuse products because most everything was made by hand until the mid 1800's and later. Check out this history of trash to see how little a problem trash was in the past, and how as we urbanized and began buying packaged and single use products rather than using natural, reusable products the problem with trash disposal became a global crisis.

An interesting point is that the invention of synthetic plastic in 1868 seemed to begin a new age of trash dumping. What initially was a fairly stable trash problem consisting largley of organic matter like sewage, food and dead animals began to increase rapidly as people began to produce more household waste consisting of manufactured items. This lead to new "solutions" like incinerators (1874) and the development of recycling centers (1897), but failed to address the increasing amounts of refuse. In 1900 the average person produced up to 1400 lb of trash per year, by 1916 that increased to up to 1750 lb per year and it remains close to that figure to this day. That is 10 times the body weight of the average person in trash every year times everyone in the country and the population is increasing - way grosser than handling your own bodily fluids.

Next time you carry your trash to the curb, look at how much is in the can for the week. Is it one bag? Two? Are you one of the families that has two or more cans full over the brim with trash? For my family, my goal is to put at most one full bag of trash out per week. I'm not counting recycling here, just the trash. If it is more than that, I try to figure out what is in there and what can be replaced with reusable products or eliminated because I don't want to see the day where we have generated so much waste that even burning and burying it doesn't work anymore.

Reusable Menstrual Products - Think they're gross? Think again!

I remember the first time I read about reusable menstrual products like those found at www.lunapads.com www.gladrags.com www.pandoraspads.com and many other places online. "Eeew - gross!!" I said. I simply could not imagine taking a bloody pad, tucking it into a waterproof liner and putting it back in my purse. Or even worse - taking a cup or sponge and rinsing it out and putting it right back in. I was convinced it could not be clean or healthy. I could not have been more wrong.

Years earlier I had tried an Instead disposable menstrual cup, but it was horribly uncomfortable and spilled on the way out. I tossed the rest of the box and went back to my trusty tampons. It was not until very recently that I found out my "trusty" tampons aren't so trustworthy. Dispite what is implied by the white medical look of tampons, they are not sterile. Even the seemingly natural cardboard applicator tampons have chemicals like dioxin, which has a half life of 11 years in the human body, so if I absorb the dioxin of a single tampon today, 11 years from now half of that dioxin will still be in my body - now THAT'S gross! Sure, the levels won't kill you, but nobody really knows how much dioxin they are getting from all sources and we do know that it can cause a whole host of medical issues in high doses, so why expose yourself to more than you need to? Tampon manufacturers would rather expose you to the byproducts of the chemical bleaching process than have their tampons look like natural fibers. That is, if they even are - many tampons are made of a lot of synthetic fibers that can scratch the vagina and open tiny wounds that increase the risk for infections, including Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS).

So what to do for internal protection. I was never a pad person since they always ended up chafing my skin and leaving a nasty rash up to a week later. They also had a bad odor, and I am sensitive to scented products and they are subject to the same chemical bleaching products and covered in non-breathable plastic that makes me sweat. I was not going to all pads and Instead cups don't fit. Luckily Instead is not the only option. I found things like the Moon Cup http://www.mooncup.co.uk/ (great for women that are not so large "down there"), the Diva cup, the lady cup http://www.ladycup.eu/ and the Keeper cup (and their version of the Moon Cup) http://www.keeper.com/ and many more. Check out http://menstrualcups.org/ for information from many women that have used these products and find out what is right for you. These cups can last for up to 10 years and cost $20-40 USD, so imagine the savings for your pocket, too! But maybe the cups aren't right for you for whatever reason. Maybe, like me, you are right on the cusp between the two sizes because of age, or maybe you are planning on having a baby soon and don't want to buy a cup until after when you will need the larger size. What to do in the interim if you're ready to dump your disposables? I decided to buy some silk sea sponges. When they come, they seem hard and uncomfortable, but once damp they are softer than any tampon on the face of the planet and you can trim them to the perfect size for you. They are easy to clean (just rinse them out like a kitchen sponge and reinsert) and are natural and renewable. I suggest buying 4 sponges to start so if you have to use a public restroom you have extras. You can tuck a used sponge into a reusable pad carry bag to clean at home.

I did eventually decide I needed some better pads though, and so I finally took the plunge and got some cotton pads. I have since been amazed at the difference in feeling and odor and my entire opinion of pads has changed. When I got my first pantyliner (from Gladrags) I was immediately shocked with how soft it was. These pads wrap around your panties and close with a snap, and once in I could barely even feel it - a far cry from the disposables that make me feel sorry for infants everywhere trapped in diapers. They even make different absorbancies - some companies make 3 (liner, day and night) and others have many different sizes and styles (liner, mini, maxi, long, wide, heavy/night and postpartum). I got some Gladrags, but the day pads are too big for my light cycle and I had to continue in search of a cloth pad that was soft, but smaller. I found my match in Lunapads mini pad and liner. They are a perfect fit, and you can adjust the absorbancy from maxi pad to pantyliner by adding layers of some of the softest fabric I have ever touched, then because the liners attach on the top rather than fitting under the pad, you can change only the liner and go on with your day. I thought I would do no better until I saw that Lunapads also makes a line of menstrual underwear called Lunapanties with built in liners and the ability to add additional ones. These are quite plainly the most comfortable external menstrual product I have used in my life. They feel like regular underwear. There are many other brands out there, and I encourage anyone willing to try a few.

Still thinking it's gross? Well - I guess gross is relative. If you think it's disgusting to wash out a cotton pad or sponge in the sink or empty a cup of blood into the toilet and you think you can't take it, I ask you to think of how many cycles you've had in your life so far. About how many soiled pads and tampons do you throw out during the course of that cycle? Now imagine all those pads with their non-biodegradable synthetic fibers and plastics and all the packaging and applicators that came with those pads in a heap in your backyard. Maybe they're not in your backyard personally, but they and all the other products from all the other women using disposables are in someone's backyard, or maybe floating in a bay, ocean or river somewhere. Wherever they ended up, they are still on this Earth contributing to the mountains of trash we call landfills. That's really gross, a whole lot more gross than throwing a blood stained cloth in the wash (something you would not think twice about if you got cut and bled on your favorite blouse).

But they cost too much, some people say when they first see the staggering prices of these products. Well - up front these may seem like expensive solutions, and you can easily spend $100-200 getting all the reusable products you will need for your cycle, however once you buy them, that's it for the next 5-10 years. Even if you buy discount products and sale products, you will still spend more than that in the course of 5 years, and if you take good care of your products, they may even last longer.

I should also note that many pad manufacturers also make pads for during pregnancy and after childbirth. The soft, skin-friendly fabrics are great for soothing already irritated skin (not to mention promoting healing and preventing secondary infection - there is a reason we don't use airtight bandages) and the adjustable absorbancy is great for heavy bleeding and incontinence.

Still not convinced? There's probably nothing I can say that will open your mind, but I leave you with one final, albeit less ideal, solution. Seventh Generation, Natracare and other such Earth-friendly companies offer a line of organic cotton disposable menstrual products. These are biodegradable, renewable and non-toxic, though they still end up in landfills and still require packaging and manufacturing energy and shipping and all the other nasties that go hand in hand with anything disposable. Still, if you must dispose, now you can do so in an environmentally conscious way.