What’s The Secret Behind Diapers.com Success? A Kiva Robot Warehouse

>The average 2006 disposable nappy would result in a global warming impact of approximately 550kg of carbon dioxide equivalents used over the two and a half years a child is typically in nappies. The global warming impact from disposable nappies use has decreased since the previous study due to manufacturing changes and a 13.5 per cent reduction in the weight of nappies.

and then for cloth nappies

>For reusable nappies, the baseline scenario based on average washer and drier use produced a global warming impact of approximately 570kg of carbon dioxide equivalents. However, the study showed that the impacts for reusable nappies are highly dependent on the way they are laundered. Washing the nappies in fuller loads or line-drying them outdoors all the time (ignoring UK climatic conditions for the purposes of illustration) was found to reduce this figure by 16 per cent. Combining three of the beneficial scenarios (washing nappies in a fuller load, outdoor line drying all of the time, and reusing nappies on a second child) would lower the global warming impact by 40 per cent from the baseline scenario, or some 200kg of carbon dioxide equivalents over the two and a half years, equal to driving a car approximately 1,000 km.

FWIW we buy compostable disposables to limit landfill impact (contrary to another comment landfill area is not infinite) and bought our "real" nappies on ebay and have then reused them. We don't tumble dry nappies (UK) and practice what's considered early potty training which reduces cleaning requirements¹.

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¹Clearly reducing nappy changing as much as possible and reducing the period of nappy wearing has a great impact.

Provided the nappies get re-used, you have a moderately good washing machine and don't tumble dry all the time then cloth are better - it's a very detailed study.

In addition if one has an A+ rated washer always line dries, reuses nappies for a second child (eg we bought ours 2nd hand on ebay and reused them and will sell them on or use them as clean-up cloths) then cloth nappies are substantially better.

>If it's cheaper to get it delivered via next day air, then it must have used less energy.

This appears to be specious reasoning. A company can charge more or less for delivery for competition purposes the actual cost of transportation is usually obscured. I can fly the 200mi to my in-laws more cheaply than taking the train, I don't believe it uses less energy to fly.

See for example http://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm which gives a figure of 90% CO2 saving by train (CO2 emission correlating with energy expense seems reasonable).

Big if. No shipper ever reveals their true costs to you, they always build in some margin. An amusing illustration of this is UPS. Internally 2-day shipping costs more than overnight (they have to pay for warehouse space to keep the packages around for a day), but they charge more for 1-day.

In the case of Diapers.com, no option is provided to let you get any other kind of shipment speed. That's because they see their competition as regular retail stores. And the cost savings of eliminating the retailer are enough that they can justify much higher shipping costs.

For a realistic comparison see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportati... (and keep in mind that the true costs for transporting stuff by aircraft can depend more on volume than weight).

And landfill space is infinite. The earth is enormous. There are just political objections to landfills so they keep them in short supply. For example you could fill old coal mines with landfill and never run out of space. You could undo mountaintop removal by filling it with dilute garbage, then a deep layer of topsoil.

There really is an infinite amount of space - we can't make more garbage than there is matter on the earth. So whatever material we make, we automatically have room to bury it.