Ditching disposable diapers

When you first hear “$24 for one diaper,” it sounds a little crazy, especially when you need 18 to 24 of them if you want to cloth diaper your baby at all times.

Adrienne Snow and Rebecca Pleasants, mother and daughter and two of the owners of Little Smudgeez, call their cloth diapers “investments.”

“If you showed up at a baby shower with this one diaper, which is $24, if that mom uses it three to four times a week, that’s the equivalent to showing up with $116 worth of disposable diapers,” Snow said.

When asked about the life of these diapers, Snow replied, “I’d say the average is two children. You would absolutely be able to for a third child, but if they were put under too much stress or heat, you might have to get a secondary cover because the laminate is what would break down, not the interior.”

Given the numbers, disposable diapers start to get a little scary. Each baby who uses only disposable diapers is estimated to use about 6,000 to 8,000 diapers in the diaper-wearing years, and disposable diapers are estimated to take about 500 or more years to decompose. That’s a huge commitment of resources.

“I think if we each had to see our own garbage heap in our own yards, if Waste Management didn’t come and pick it up from us and take it somewhere we weren’t aware of it, if we had to see that mound of diapers in our own yard, I think it would probably change people,” Snow said.

In Northern Nevada there are few different ways to get cloth diapers from Little Smudgeez. There are two diaper services in the area and both offer cloth diapers from Little Smudgeez. Bear Bums services Reno, Sparks, Incline Village, Kings Beach, Tahoe City and Truckee, and Crunchy Babies primarily services Minden, Carson City and South Lake Tahoe. Little Smudgeez’s diapers are also available through the company directly and at some stores in the area. The Nurturing Nest in Reno, Rogers Cowboy Supply in Sparks and S&W Feeds in Carson City all carry these diapers.

Little Smudgeez recently got involved with the Fernley chapter of the Rebecca Foundation, which lends cloth diapers to low-income families in U.S. communities. The national foundation also lends to military families. Little Smudgeez will donate diapers to the foundation and plans to help with a reduced pricing structure for those coming out of the program as well.

With the growth that Little Smudgeez has had recently, it took on a second factory overseas. The first factory is in Nevada and is still in operation. Snow said they wanted to stay Nevada made, but the company’s growth made it difficult. They are currently looking to open a third factory—this one in the U.S.—and are working to open a storefront and shipping facility in Fallon, which the owners call home.

The diapers are made of bamboo fabrics, and the outer cover is laminated in polyurethane to make it waterproof. The soaker pad inside, which snaps in and out, has six layers of fabric and can be purchased separately for $8.