The Dallas branch of Neiman Marcus department store has unveiled its Children's-Dreams-of-Saving-the-Environment display, made up of "59 rotating translucent globes filled with crushed up aluminum cans, diapers, rolled newspapers and the like arranged in the shape of a tree."
The news report goes on to say:
My first thought upon reading this is that the Babe in the manger never used any. I also can't help wondering what the bottom line of the "lesson" for children is meant to be.
My next was a question of simple mathematics. According to my calculations, a child potty-trained at age two would need to go through almost 14 diapers a day every day of his life to get to the stated "typical" use of 10,000. A child potty-trained at age three would need to use 9 or more diapers a day to reach the norm.
Does this figure sound right to you?
No. But it sure SEEMS like that many...
Posted by: Theresa | November 28, 2008 at 04:54 AM
My son wore cloth diapers and disposables at day care and I don't think we went through 14 diapers a day even in cloth diapers.
Sounds a little high to me, maybe it's calculated on a child being potty trained at 3 and a half.
Posted by: Ellen | November 28, 2008 at 06:55 AM
Yeah, that math seems a bit fuzzy to me, too.
Posted by: Beck | November 28, 2008 at 08:15 AM
You know, it would make a good lesson in statistics. The total was probably arrived at by taking the number of diapers a *newborn* goes through, and multiplying it out through potty training age (even so, I think it's high for newborns.) But, it would illustrate a faulty line of reasoning, because it doesn't take into account the fact that, cloth or disposable, the number of dirty diapers a day changes drastically from newborn-age to older babies to toddlers.
Posted by: Karen Edmisten | November 28, 2008 at 09:11 AM
Sounds a bit potty to me ;-)
Is there a rather sinister side to this as well though -- all about the "environmentally unfriendly" element of bringing a child into the world? Maybe I'm paranoid...
Posted by: Elizabeth H. | November 28, 2008 at 03:00 PM
That absolutely can't be right! The only time we use anywhere near 9-14 diapers in a day would be with a newborn.
Speaking of which, you're getting pretty close! Hope you're feeling well...
Posted by: michelle waters | November 28, 2008 at 09:12 PM
For our diaper wearing boy we use maybe 2 and at most 3 a day. Many days we use cloth.
Just a funny story, my daughter still wets at night (some nights she is dry but other nights not) and she has cloth pullups. Last night, my dear husband helped me pull one of the cloth pullups off her while she was half asleep and he called it "your pioneer rags". I laughed so hard that I woke her up. I'm still laughing.
Posted by: nina | November 29, 2008 at 10:01 AM
Lol! I think the ONLY time we even came CLOSE to 14 diapers a day was when they were brand new newborns and I was nursing...you know how it can sometimes be hard to know when they are completely "finished"? Lol!
I wonder if they asked REAL mothers how many diapers were used on average, or if some young thing in the marketing department just guessed??
We used cloth 99% of the time.
Posted by: Donna | December 18, 2008 at 07:46 AM