Parents Put Up With Less Shit Thanks to Internet Cloth Diaper Delivery

For Katie Hew, cloth diapers were on her mind when her first child was born because of their health and environmental benefits, such as keeping an estimated 18 billion diapers out of landfills each year. But they posed a stinky situation because she didn't have a washer or dryer in her Brooklyn home.

Enter, the modern cloth diaper delivery industry. Laundering services in cities like New York City, San Francisco and other large metros in between have popped up in the past 10 years and offer diaper delivery and cleaning.

Cloth diapers were the average American family's go-to choice for everyday babycare until about the 1960s, when consumers opted for the convenience of using disposable diapers every day. And now they've made a comeback.

Little twists give them a modern edge, said Hew, a customer of Brooklyn-based diaper service DiaperKind. Ethically sourced cloth, community diaper classes and online ordering are among the jazzed up details, but the core of the businesses are the same.

Even the diapers themselves have changed. What was once cloth square and safety pins are now colorful waterproof covers with cloth inserts. (Some companies offer the cloth square option still, for the full old-school effect.)

"The basic essence of it is the same. Now with the diapers being so different, we try to evolve with that," said Audrey Foley, owner of Diaper DuDee diaper service in Omaha, Nebraska, and chair of the Real Diaper Industry Association board of directors.

Most of them work like this: You get a delivery on a pre-set day of the week, store your dirties in a sack until pick-up day, and leave them outside your door. A new bag of fresh diapers will be left in place of the soiled bag. Some services allow customers to get the same individual diapers back each week, and others use a communal, shared system.

Of course, disposable diapers are still cheaper than cloth. But customers attest they aren't quite as expensive as they expected, A newborn baby uses about 80 diapers a week. In New York City, that will run you about $40 a week with DiaperKind for delivery, pick up and laundering. In San Francisco, it's about $25 a week with Tiny Tots. In Miami, it's $25 a week with Mother Earth Diaper Service.

Whereas an 88-count of Pampers newborn diapers costs $23 on Amazon. Parents like Hew say the cost increases as the child gets older since they use fewer diapers. Most cloth services have pre-set amounts. And of course that price is much lower if you wash them yourself, but Foley admits that's one big reason these services exist: People don't want to wash loads of poopy diapers.

Foley said many cloth diaper companies that thrived during the 1950s went out of business during the rise of disposable diapers. Some new services popped up during the 1990s, when environmentalism was at a high point, and more are being created now.

Among members of the Real Diaper Industry Association, about 75 are cloth diaper delivery services, Foley said, but she knows of a few hundred that exist across the country. "In every major city, there's going to be a diaper service," she said.

Tiny Tots is one of the few cloth diaper services that has stuck around since the heyday of reusable diapers, owner Tim Aagard said. Founded in 1939, the Campbell, California, company has had some upgrades over the years. "We do have a pretty good number of customers who come back for their second or third child, and we even have second generation and third generation customers who come back," he said.

They now offer a line of compostable diaper services, and the company will pick up the soiled diapers to ensure they're taken to a proper compost facility, rather than a dump.

The benefits of cloth diapers extend beyond environmental action, although that is a large part of the decision, DiaperKind customer David Beasley said. He said cloth diapers are better for his son's skin and they have fewer diaper rashes because there aren't any chemicals that mask wetness, causing the baby to sit in their excrement for longer than necessary.

"Their baby is wrapped in that toxic environment for longer," Aagard said. With cloth diapers, the baby realizes quickly that they've wet themselves, so they cry and a diaper change is imminent.

Plus, diaper experts and parents of diaper services attest babies potty train faster in cloth diapers because they can feel when they're wet. A major plus for any parent tired of the endless cycle of diapers — and for parents trying to get little ones ready for preschool.

Cloth diaper services aren't particularly lucrative, Foley said. Most of the companies that exist are small-scale and exist to fill a void in services that they're passionate about. Customers like Beasley are attracted to that business philosophy.

"The idea of supporting a locally owned, woman-owned business and startup was exciting to us," he said. "The entrepreneurial, on-demand, sharing economy is really exciting to watch."

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