Classic Cloth Diapers

Active ingredients Bleached cotton, plus wool or plastic, depending on the diaper cover you use.

** Green factor In your home laundry, it takes the equivalent of five toilet flushes, or 15 gallons of water, to wash a day's worth of cloth diapers - that's 5,475 gallons per year (those numbers continue to fall as washing machines become more efficient). Diaper services use less water for more diapers, but then you have to factor in the delivery-truck emissions. In addition, there's the water and energy used in growing and harvesting cotton - when you add all of that to the resources used in the laundry, disposables and cloth come out about even. Plus, cotton is one of our most heavily sprayed crops - that's lots of chemicals entering our environment. (The cancer-causing dioxin in the chlorine bleach used to whiten some cloth diapers is the same dioxin that's used in disposables, so that part's a wash.) On the big plus side, using cloth diapers spares our fields and streams from being polluted by poop, and our landfills from being piled high with plastic.

** Learning curve Getting the diaper on the baby takes some practice. And the origami-like folding, the daily washing - it's enough to make the modern mama reach for disposables.

*** Leakage factor It all depends on how well you put on the diaper and which brand you use. Generally, Number One doesn’t seem to be the problem; it’s smelly Number Two that somehow finds it’s way to the free world.

** Your baby's butt No one likes a soggy behind, but if you change diapers frequently – more frequently than you would a classic disposable - Baby should stay comfortable; if you don't, that little bottom could end up with a very uncomfortable rash.

***** Your out-of-pocket Your total out-of-pocket for diapers, plastic diaper covers and pins adds up to a grand total of $150 by the time your child is out of diapers. The average diaper service charges $15 per week, so unless you do the wash at home (factor in higher electric and water bills), that's at least an additional $1,500 during your baby's pre-potty years.

What you can do Air-drying a cloth diaper in the sun naturally bleaches it and saves a ton of energy. Once your child is done with diapers, the cloths are great for cleaning.