Recently, I was changing my daughter's diaper at my friend’s house, and she asked me, "Can you dump the poop in the toilet before putting the diaper in the pail?"
Sure, I said, and my friend explained that she was asking because she’d heard it was against federal regulations to put human waste in landfills -- but for some reason, nobody enforced this when it came to the poop found in diapers.
Oh good golly. Bad enough I'm using disposables in the first place -- am I doing even more damage by not taking this extra, easy-enough step?
Googling didn't tell me much; cloth-diaper and compostable-diaper sites made vague reference to this, but there was no official word. So, I called the authorities. Here’s what the EPA and the California Department of Resources had to say about human poop in landfills.
The EPA said, "Disposable diapers fall under the category of municipal solid waste, which means the material is safe to be disposed of in a U.S. municipal solid waste landfill." What’s more: "Modern landfills are well-engineered facilities that are located, designed, operated, and monitored to ensure compliance with federal regulations, which aim to protect the environment from contaminants, which may be present in the solid waste stream."
Alrighty then. But I live in California, which sometimes has more stringent standards than the rest of the country. For example, my town has excellent recycling. We even have compost pick-up! So, I called the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery to get a more local response.
Their spokesperson, Amy Norris, told me that, indeed, a landfill is a place for non-hazardous waste -- but "the contents of a diaper are considered solid waste, not hazardous or medical waste." Plus, since diaper bags are mixed in with a lot of other trash when it’s part of residential pickup, there’s "not a concentration of a huge amount of human waste at any time." (Amy Norris has clearly not seen my Diaper Genie.)
On the other hand, "It’ll make your diaper pail stink less if you do dump that in the toilet and flush it,” she pointed out. Six years after her youngest was potty-trained, Norris still has vivid memories of that particular aroma.
Good point. But chances are, I won’t be adding this extra step to my diaper-changing routine. If I were looking to lessen the amount of guilt I feel over using disposable diapers (and I do feel awfully guilty about it), I would go the extra mile. But if it’s just a question of protecting my nose, meh. I’m made of tougher stuff than baby poop.
Well, except when they don’t get enough water, but that’s another story.
Had you heard this poop-dumping rumor? Do you dump your baby’s poop before ditching the dipe?
Image via misocrazy/Flickr
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Comments 47
Always did it for the stink factor. If it was solid enough, into the toilet it went! And ESPECIALLY at a friend's.
No and No.
I use primarily cloth, but on the rare occasion my daughter is in a disposable, I do dump the poo as much as possible. Sure it's not illegal to throw the poop away, but I'd much rather have it go into the water treatment facility than sit in a landfill forever. It is amazing that this one tidbit of information was completely lost when the shift from cloth to disposable happened.
I can see the point of dumping poop, but diarrhea is not possible to dump.
Yeah, never heard of that "rule". If my son's poops had been solid enough maybe, but his were always on the squishy side. As a PP said, would have been way to labor intensive to get the poop off the diaper and into the toilet. Yay diaper genie!
recently stayed at a hotel... and I would like to say a sarcastic "thank you" to the parents that used the hall trash can as their poo poo diaper pail allllll week end long.... realllllll classsy... like the parents who throw the poo poo diapers in the parking lots too...
My kids are now 16 and 12 and I would never have thought of dumping their poop in the toilet. I had a diaper genie. If it were a messy diaper it went out to the trash immediately. I guess this is why I don't have any pets, because I am not cleaning up behind them!
Not a law, but something responsible humans could/should choose to do...putting out two 13 gallon bags of just diapers (two little kids) for the trash each week was one of the reasons I switched to cloth!
nearly 11 months on and my daughter who still has not really dived into solids and rejected them for the most part still has breastfed baby poop - too much info, but I can only imagine flushing liquid poop would be a tad difficult, we tie them in bags and put them in a pail outside next to the rest of our rubbish that goes to the curb
I'll be darned if I'm going to try to dump (no pun intended) what my 2 year old did in her diaper today. When she's potty training and in undies sure but not until then.