Environ-mental

Recently at work we had a minor disagreement over the "green-ness" of cloth diapers. I used cloth diapers for Punkinhead when she was a baby primarily because they were (long-term) the cheaper option.
At the impromptu baby shower years ago, I received three dozen cotton diapers and six pairs of rubber pants. I kept a big Rubbermaid tub (snap-tight lid) with an inch of white vinegar water in the bottom of it in her room to hold the used diapers, and washed a load of them every three days or so. I was fortunate to be home with her since no child care facilities accepted cloth diapers. To be honest, I never considered the "carbon footprint" of my diaper use at all.
But now, I'm all self-righteously GREEN, so when a coworker suggested that there is a reputable study out that dispels the idea that cloth diapers are a greener alternative to disposables, I took umbrage at the bursting of my environmentally-friendly balloon.
Sure enough, back in 2005, the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs looked at the carbon footprint of "nappies," cloth and disposable. The study concluded that, provided the cloth diapers were line-dried (year round) that they are slightly better for the environment. But really, who does that? In 2008, the Times printed an expose on the supposed scuttling of the study results.
What the study did NOT take into account of at all is that disposable diapers are actually disposed of. In landfills. And they sit there for hundreds of years. Leaching chemicals and crap (literally) into the earth, groundwater and atmosphere.
Technically, this affects their "carbon footprint" only in the amount of energy needed to cart them to the landfill and bulldoze them under a bigger pile of garbage, but even that amount of energy shouldn't be discounted.
Other arguments presented against the study look at the energy-efficiency of the washers and dryers, the type of cloth used, and any potential "afterlife" a cloth diaper might have that would mitigate its impact. (We used out old diapers to clean the family car for YEARS after Punkinhead was in big-girl panties.)
In the long run, the amount of energy each type of diaper uses is pretty close. And now they are making very green disposables (no dangerous chemicals, relatively biodegradable) in addition to greener cloth alternatives (wool, hemp).
But I still feel smug knowing that my Punkinhead did not contribute significantly to the 3.4 million tons of diapers tossed in the U.S. every year. (Even if I did it out of penny-pinching instead of carbon-footprint awareness!)