Each month, we will highlight community heroes that are making a difference in their communities and working to make their local environments cleaner and healthier.
This month, we are taking a look at Earth Diaper in CA!
Earth Diaper partners with agencies that work directly with identified low-income families to provide either free or subsidized diapers and a diaper composting service. Biobag Associate spoke to Lily Strong with Earth Diaper about the organization. Their interview is transcribed below.
What led you to start your composting operation?
Why diapers? Diapers are 3% of our landfill waste and growing. They take 500 years to break down and are filled with chemicals. Mothers tell me that it hurts their hearts to create so much garbage (about 7000 diapers per child). I got started working with low-income mothe.rs & babies as a public health nurse home visitor and noticed how hard it was for these families to afford diapers. Often these moms have to make choices between essentials like food & rent or diapers. This creates both stress for parents and sometimes skin breakdown for babies (if they are not changed enough). My love of the earth and babies combined gave birth to the idea to bring free compostable diapers to shelter families. We piloted the program in 2018 and just kept going because we got so much good feedback and the families love it.
Who do you serve and how can people get in touch with you if they want to start composting?
We serve a homeless shelter for women with young children in Santa Cruz, California. We hope to grow to other shelters where composting is available. We use donations to fund compostable diapers and wipes purchases for the shelter. We contract with another company (Earth Baby) to drop off and pick up diapers and then diapers are composted at Z-best in Gilroy (which is a huge composting operation with a permit for human waste). If anyone is interested in donating to purchase diapers for a low income family (and divert them from a landfill!) visit our website at earthdiaper.org and click on the donate button. All donations are tax deductible. If you are interested in buying compostable diapers for your own use please also visit our website and check out our affiliate partner organizations.
How much organic material do you typically take in on a weekly basis?
We compost about 150 diapers a week currently. Our diaper use depends on how many babies are at the shelter and how old they are.
Feel free to add any additional information about your operation as you see fit.
We had a great article in the Santa Cruz Goodtimes. To read it click here: https://goodtimes.sc/santa-cruz-news/news/earth-diaper/
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