Depending on your source, between 18 and 24.7 billion diapers end up in the trash...annually. Possibly more. Seriously. 

According to Treehugger.com, an average baby goes through 5,000 - 8,000 diapers during the time before potty-training. "The United States alone produces 18 billion dirty diapers annually, thanks to the eighty percent of parents who use disposables." This adds up to 82,000 tons of plastic and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp. Picture a forest of 250,000 trees, destroyed.Considering that a diaper "lives" on a child's bum for only a few hours before being tossed into a landfill, left to sit for over 200-500 years...well, maybe. No one really knows since disposables were invented over 40 years ago. There's a good chance that they may not biodegrade at all. Diapers are actually the third largest consumer items found in landfills, representing 30% of all non-biodegradable waste. Or, if you'd like a visual, we love this example from Modern Natural Baby. But, guess what. If you're already cloth diapering, you're single-handedly subtracting 2,000 pounds of garbage to that total for two years. If you use cloth for more than one child, multiply the numbers. It truly, exponentially adds up - in a good way. There are a ton of other ways to help in the fight to save our planet and its inhabitants from waste, but using cloth diapers is a hugely effective choice. You should be proud for choosing this path, whether you cloth diaper for environmental reasons or not. And, if you're on the fence still, there's no better time than April to join the #makeclothmainstream challenge and kick those sposies to the curb. Not literally. Remember? It may be there forever.