brief review: Diaper Genie

[mmcirvin]

The Diaper Genie is a simple manual device that seals dirty diapers into a continuous tube of plastic film with twists in between the diapers. You push a diaper down into the mouth of the Diaper Genie, close the lid and twist a handle, and the diaper is hidden away behind a twist in the plastic, with the Genie ready to receive the next diaper. The bin in the bottom gradually fills up with what I can only describe as a string of plump diaper sausages. When the bin fills up after about 30 or 35 diapers (two or three days' worth at the current rate), you are supposed to manipulate a mechanism that cuts the plastic tube, empty the bin into the trash, then tie off the tube.

It works so well at its basic task of making dirty diapers go away and sealing in odors that I do not even begrudge them their business model (which you can probably guess: don't sell razors, sell razor blades). There are cheaper competitors that take standard trash bags, but I have it on the authority of my brother-in-law that these are not as good at keeping in the stink.

The main weakness is the cutting mechanism: it doesn't work very well, and in practice you'll probably end up reaching in there and cutting the tube with scissors, negating the claim that you can perform the dumping operation without touching the filled tube. This isn't too onerous since the diapers are all twisted away inside.

The whole thing wastes petrochemicals and contributes to the flush-and-forget ethos of our wasteful planet-raping exploitative consumer capitalist society blah blah screw it, I have a little poopy baby.

Comments

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Your baby's pqqp won't even start to stink in any significant way until she's on solid foods, and especially meats. Even then, my experience is that cloth diapers in a decent diaper pail, maintained with a little care, were not unpleasant enough to drive me to want to use disposables: yes, I know you can argue the environmental impact of cloth is not overwhelmingly less than that of disposables, but I still felt better about using them if only because they don't put who knows what strange compounds in near-contact with your baby's butt -- plus, we now have cleaning rags for life.

Not that we didn't use disposables, and in fact we converted over to them 100% after a while; they are less hassle. But I never found it any problem at all to toss the used one in a plastic grocery bag, tie it off, and put it in the trash.

environmental impact

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

You live in the land of fresh, running water! The environmental impact of your poopy cloth diapers was a little extra detergent. NOW don't you feel bad about all those disposables?

And Matt's sausage casings waste no more petrochemicals than the plastic grocery bags you didn't recycle. Assuming, of course, that those recycle bins outside your supermarket actually feed a recycler and aren't just there to make consumers feel eco-friendly enough to assuage their consciences for the next round of wasteful purchases.

OK, time to go dump my juice bottle and the plastic wrap from my bagel bought on my half-hour commute . . .

Re: environmental impact

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Well, we re-use the plastic grocery bags to... handle cat poop. Which at this point is still vastly, vastly stinkier than the baby poop, so we've already got the equivalent of a massive diaper pail going.

Except the diapers make up for it in volume, since the cat boxes only need to be scooped about once a day and the baby poops at least five or six times a day.

On the whole, the environmental impact of my baby's diapers is something that I decided early on not to worry too much about. I replaced the windows in this damn house that I am selling anyway and that I probably could have sold without it. That's planet-saving-altruistic, right???

Re: environmental impact

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

If you can make the effort to go with *some* cloth diapers, go for it; disposable's going to be best for those times when you're heading out of the house for a number of hours and don't really see yourself carrying a poopy diaper around for an indefinite period before it'll get home for, ah, "treatment."

Also worth noting is that there will come a time when Jorie will discriminate-- make a nice pattern on the exterior of the cloth, or she might decide she wants the ones with her favorite cartoon character on the outside. You've got at least 20 months before you have to cogitate on that, but the day will come.

Re: environmental impact

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Well, for the cloth diapers, there's the environmental impact of growing cotton and producing cotton diapers (and plastic diaper covers) in the first place; the energy required to wash them; there's detergent, yes, and bleach; and while we were using the diaper service, there's the truck. (Then when the diaper service went out of business we washed 'em at home.) Also factoring into the comparison is that with disposables the pqqp goes into the landfill while with cloth it goes into the waste water system -- which is worse? (Actually I think if you study the fine print on disposable diapers they tell you you're supposed to rinse the poop into the toilet rather than put it in your trash, but nobody does that.) I still think it's a win for cotton, but people argue.

For grocery bags vs. Diaper Genie, of course the consumables are environmentally comparable. For that comparison I think the wallet impact is more relevant.

Re: environmental impact

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

I made my own one-piece cloth flannel diapers (with Velcro, and an attached waterproof outer layer) -- actually, I bought a few, to see how they were made, and then bought a couple of yards of fabric to make my own. The fact that I was not supporting a corporate monolith (except perhaps for the makers of the textiles) kinda made me feel good. When Spud grew out of them, I bleached them and sent them off on the recycling truck, in a (reused!) grocery bag labeled TEXTILES.

But then, did you know that one can make ones own menstrual pads, as well?

Used diapers went into a pail that contained a small trash bag filled with water, a little bit of vinegar, and some lovely scented orangey stuff. Pail lived in bathroom. Take used diaper into bathroom, flip potential poop into toilet, place diaper into pail. When pail is full (usually once a day or two), lift out bag, poke hole in bottom to drain into toilet, flush, and then take the diapers downstairs to the washing machine.

It's WAY less gross than cat poop.

Re: environmental impact

[asienieizi.livejournal.com]

"It's WAY less gross than cat poop."
Unless your washing machine breaks, you're out of diapers, don't have a car to get to the store and have to wash them in the bath tub!
God I loved toilet training.

Re: environmental impact

[kerri9494.livejournal.com]

Also, I don't think the consumables are environmentally comparable. The grocery bags would have been made for groceries, had you reused them or not. If grocery bags were always used instead of Diaper Genie sausage casing, I betcha we'd have the same number of grocery bags being created, but no Diaper Genie bag thingies.

Reused or not?

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

The choice shouldn't be reuse or toss, it should be reuse or recycle. If the ones in recycling bin in front of the supermarket actually get recycled, then the ones in the garbage with the diapers mean more new polyethylene being made to hold groceries.

Re: environmental impact

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

It's probably better to throw the poop away-- at least there's a chance the stomach flora can do some good in a landfill, and hey, maybe someday a baby's stomach and some random mutation will cook up the ideal hydrocarbon-eating bacterium-- will you want that kid to be on cloth diapers?

[thette.livejournal.com]

I've found that for portable stinkfreeness, a roll of dog poo bags works very well. (We mainly have pee diapers, which don't smell worse than the rest of the trash. Hulda has settled in a routine where she only poops once every other day.)

[thette.livejournal.com]

I think one other reason we don't have to worry is that we live in an apartment, and have a trash chute.

[cheryln.livejournal.com]

We have a Diaper Champ for the exact reason you mention: that it uses any bags we happen to have around. Since we live in a house with a yard and twice-weekly trash pickup, getting rid of stink is a small matter; in fact, I don't think we've ever said, "Wow, the diaper pail smells! We need to empty that right away!" If we had a studio apartment with no dumpster and weekly pickup, I can see that we'd prioritize odor containment.

[jarai.livejournal.com]

Diaper sausages: Now with diaper gravy!

[(Anonymous)]

:(

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Also worth noting-- though your kid and therefore her diapers will get bigger and bigger, respectively, the number you go through will drop quite a bit as the poop becomes more solid and as the baby's back end begins to discriminate between liquid and solid, where the liquid can be absorbed and safely contained away from Jorie's skin without requiring a diaper change.

Plus you'll realize how much you're spending on diapers-- the market solution will rear its head soon.

DIAPER GRAVY!

[timchuma.livejournal.com]

It's what you have on diaper sausages!
(someone had to say it, unfortunately it had to be me!)