AURORA, Ill. -- It's been more than 40 years since Proctor & Gamble introduced Pampers, and more than 90 percent of today's babies are in disposable diapers.
But there is a green movement to go back in time, NBC5's Ginger Zee reported. Your sweet little bundle of joy makes eight to 10 little bundles of waste every day. That's more than 3,000 annual diaper changes. Multiply it by the 92.5 percent of disposable diaper-wearing tots in this country, and you get at least 20 billion disposable diapers filling our trash cans each year. "Diapers that are being tossed in right now are going to be in those landfills once my daughter's great great grandchildren have come and gone, and that's frightening," said Pam Kopcio, owner of Green Bebe, a cloth diaper business.. But that's not the only reason Kopcio started Green Bebe. Kopcio said it was because her daughter "developed a horrible diaper rash that wouldn't go away." Parents who choose to use cloth diapers gave Zee myriad reasons why -- from cost to comfort for the child. Many parents have made the switch, deciding to cover baby's bum with cotton, wool or hemp. Kopcio, the self-proclaimed queen of cloth diapers, wants other parents out there to know there is an alternative to disposables. "There was a time before disposable diapers and we're bringing it back," one cloth-diapering parent said. Green Bebe intends to bring back cloth diapering in a disposable society that has seemingly forgotten where we all began. "My mom cloth diapered 10 children, and I was, like, 'Gross!' But then I saw my friend do it," said Sarah, a mom who'se chosen to ditch the disposables. "I said, 'Am in really old fashion or just really modern? Cause green is in,'" said Heather, another cloth diaper proponent. It seems that green really is in, even in diapers.
