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Can Disposable Diapers Go Sustainable?
As an eco-conscious parent, Carrie Pollak’s idea of sustainability was to forego diapers entirely. Instead, she opted for elimination communication, which relies on timing and cues to recognize when a baby needs to use the toilet, aiming to reduce or even eliminate the need for diapers from a very young age.
While this method may not be everyone’s first choice, Pollak’s decision reflects a growing desire among parents and caregivers to find more environmentally friendly options for their little ones. In 2024, the market for plant-based diapers reached $1.42 billion, and it is forecast to reach $3.52 billion by 2033.
And with good reason. Disposable diapers, which are made of everything from sodium polyacrylate — which turns liquid into a gel to lock moisture away — to water-repellent plastics such as polyethylene, reportedly make up the third-largest consumer item in U.S. landfills. Each diaper can take up to 500 years to degrade, releasing greenhouse gases such as methane into the atmosphere in the process.
Though Pollak sees cloth diapers as the most sustainable option, she purchased compostable diaper company Boo to help scale disposable diaper alternatives. Courtesy of Diaper Stork
Keeping disposable diapers out of landfills is what has driven Pollack’s desire to offer more sustainable options. In 2018, she purchased Diaper Stork, a Seattle-area cloth diaper subscription service. Cloth diapers are provided to customers, picked up, cleaned and returned for a fee. But that wasn’t enough for Pollack. Although she believes cloth diapers are the most sustainable option available, she was aware that to scale the use of disposable diaper alternatives, she’d need to be innovative.
“It was always on my mind,” she says, “on how I could make this a bigger company with a broader impact.” Her answer was to purchase Boo, a diaper company providing compostable diapers made from bamboo.
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In Washington State, plant-based diapers such as Boo’s can be composted at home as long as they contain urine only, because human urine is generally sterile. But this can be a complicated, time-consuming process requiring a home-composting system that maintains the proper temperature, moisture and oxygen levels, as well as the correct ratio between brown and green materials.
As a general rule, plant-based disposable diapers are broken down fastest as part of an industrial composting system. It therefore became Pollak’s dream not just to compost diapers, but to turn them into biochar, a type of compost that experts believe could replace synthetic fertilizers. Historically, biochar was made from heating plants and wood at extremely high temperatures (upwards of 900°F) in an oxygen-deprived environment. When organic waste such as that found in a diaper is heated, the process kills any pathogens that it may contain.
But turning diapers into biochar had not been done before in Washington State, and there was no precedent for lawmakers to establish a permitting system for the process, says Pollak.
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