All parents know that their little bundles of joy deposit big bundles of . . . undesirable material in their adorable little pants multiple times a day. Santa Cruz parent Karen Nelsen and her friends knew that firsthand.
All parents know that their little bundles of joy deposit big bundles of . . . undesirable material in their adorable little pants multiple times a day. Santa Cruz parent Karen Nelsen and her friends knew that firsthand. “A friend of mine was taking out his garbage and it was filled from top to bottom with disposable diapers,” she says. “He thought, OK, there’s got to be something different we can do.”
That twinge of garbage guilt became the inspiration for Earth Baby, a new diaper service with an eye on repurposing baby’s business. “The diapers are corn-based plastics with no bleach. In about three months, they’re topsoil,” she says. “We are by far the most environmentally responsible diapering solution to date.”
Once a month, Earth Baby home delivers an order of biodegradable diapers, then picks up the used ones once a week. The load is trucked to a composting facility in southern Santa Clara County, and a couple of months later, it may be technically possible to play a round of golf on sod your baby helped fertilize.
Since opening in December, the company already has 200 client families from the Bay Area, San Jose and Santa Cruz, with membership doubling every month, equating to 21,360 pounds of diapers rescued from the landfill so far. Nelsen says that at this stage, the name of the game is education. “People think they have two options – either they go the disposable or the cloth route. There’s not even an awareness that there’s an alternative,” she says.
Earth Baby isn’t just about convenience and keeping hip to the latest green trend. Nelsen also sees this as a way to par down landfills. Her company’s research shows that a disposable diaper can last anywhere from 200 to 500 years in the dump, and that diapers are the third most common item found there – creating tons of landfill material each year. “San Francisco landfills are shut down. They’re full. I believe Palo Alto will be closed in a year or two. In Santa Cruz they’ve got that great space up there but how long is that going to be available?” she says. “This is one step in rethinking how we manage our garbage.”
Call 650.641.0975 or go to www.earth-baby.com for more information.
