Go Green – Go Pumpkin’s

We’re already a good handful of weeks into 2020 – where does the time go??? At the start of a bright and shiny new year, it’s easy to romanticize about all the potential the upcoming days and weeks might hold in store. There’s a lot you can do in 365 days! Maybe this is the year you planned to start eating a bit healthier, or decided to go for that big promotion at work, or committed to learning a new musical instrument. These plans all sound fantastic in the minutes leading up to midnight on December 31, but a few weeks into the new year, the realization hits that wow, this stuff takes a lot of work – and you know what? You’re totally right. Making positive change is hard. Like, really hard. 

Or, at least, it usually is.

There’s still time to make a resolution to live a bit greener and enjoy some extra convenience in your life, too. Sure, we might have started into February, but we won’t tell anyone you got a bit of a late start on things. ? Make 2020 the year you start parenting with the environment in mind – make this the year you discover Pumpkin’s.

“Wait,” you might find yourself asking. “How does signing up with a cloth diaper delivery service qualify as living green?” Well, in more ways than you might imagine. 

Over 4,000,000 disposable diapers are discarded every single day in Canada. That adds up to just about 1.7 billion diapers hitting our landfills every single year. That’s billion with a “b.” All of this adds up to so much waste that it actually accounts for an incredible 2.5% of all residential landfill waste. 

Now, this wouldn’t be such a bad thing if disposables didn’t take so long to decompose. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The timeline over which those plasticky diapers take to break down isn’t just measured in years or decades – it’s measured in centuries. That’s right: it can take anywhere between 200 and 500 years for your typical throw-away diaper to break apart in a landfill-type setting. That could be in part thanks to all the artificial (and in some cases, even toxic) chemicals and materials that go into the manufacture of disposable diapers. 

Sodium polyacrylate is a type of super-absorbent polymer that turns into a gel-like substance when wet and is found in many modern disposable diapers; it also shares a remarkable number of similarities with the same sorts of substances that were used in tampons up until the early 80s before it was discovered that the material caused an increased risk of toxic shock syndrome. Dioxin is a carcinogenic chemical by-product of many bleaching processes – including those used by many disposable diaper manufacturers. The dyes and fragrances used by disposables aren’t much better, and have been linked to everything from dizziness and rashes to long-lasting major organ damage. 

By making the switch from disposable to cloth, not only are you keeping these materials out of our landfills, but you’re keeping them away from your little one, which is what really matters. Sure, it might be a little late to officially count as a “resolution,” but that shouldn’t hold you back. 

Make 2020 the year you discover a healthier, more environmentally friendly way to diaper. Make 2020 the year you discover comfy, cozy cloth delivered straight to your door. Make 2020 the year you discover Pumpkin’s Diaper Delivery – Calgary’s only locally-owned, family-operated cloth diaper service.