It's tough being a burden on the planet. As if new parents don't have enough to feel guilty about - what with work schedules, sibling rivalry, and the fact that there's no actual fruit in today's packed lunch - we are now reminded, on a nearly daily basis, that our babies' poop is murdering the earth.
Not the poop per se but the receptacle: the good old disposable diaper. By some reports, a baby goes through 5,000 diapers between birth and potty-training, and environmentalists note that diapers constitute the third-most-prevalent consumer item in landfills (though a few years ago, Wired magazine placed the diaper's share of US garbage at a paltry 2.1 percent.) Throughout the blogosphere, well-intentioned greenies fret over the comparisons of diaper carbon footprints, treating every soggy package of pee like a tiny package of shame.
Shame sells, of course. And the green diaper movement has attracted plenty of entrepreneurs, selling everything from cloth diapers festooned with tiny ducks to holier-than-thou tote bags that say "Cloth diapers! Laundry not landfill." The shelves of supermarkets and baby superstores are filled with a dizzying array of theoretical solutions. And even the traditional diaper conglomerates are in on the act - and not just on "Saturday Night Live," which spoofed the green-diaper movement with a commercial for "Chewable Pampers."
In real life,
Pampers has a sustainability page on its website, answering questions such as "Can you recover energy from a used Pampers diaper?" (Answer: Yes!) and "Are biodegradable diapers better for the environment?" (Answer: Nah.)
Apparently, Pampers has a point: A little research suggests that an environmentally friendly diaper solution isn't so easy to come by. Cloth diapers require so much energy to wash - unless you invest in a costly new front-loading machine and put your nappies out to air dry in the wintertime - that their carbon footprint can be bigger than disposables.
And if a diaper is thrown in a landfill, no matter how organic and chlorine-free it happens to be, it's unlikely to break down very much. So those diapers launched by an eco-conscious Swede and covered with adorable little leaves? The ones that turn into little rocks when they're filled with pee? They're not going to save the Earth, either.
Julia Roberts apparently goes for gDiapers, which tout themselves as the world's first flushable diaper. They're made up of a reusable cotton pant with a liner that can flush - or be composted, if it's only filled with pee. You have to break up the liner if you want it to go down the drain, so a gDiaper kit comes with its own potty swizzle stick.
There's something admittedly satisfying about watching a diaper swirl down the drain. But even gDiapers have been slammed by some environmentalists for using an absorptive chemical called a superabsorbent polymer to keep the pee - or most of it - inside. Presumably, that was the crystalline stuff I found on the toilet seat after one especially clumsy flush.
When I took gDiapers for a test ride - or, rather, when my little guy did - I found them easier to use than I expected, if as leaky as I feared. What I liked best about them, though, was the sales pitch. The latest form of go-green persuasion: peddling general coolness instead of guilt, vanity over superiority. Yes, the company was started by a couple from Australia with legitimate concern about the earth, but they also thought about fashion colors for their pants and a cool font for the lower-case "g" that sits on a baby's butt. And their ample disposal instructions come with a guilt-free escape clause.
If you have to throw your diaper out, the gDiapers handbook tells us, never fear: "The Earth will love you anyway." And if the Earth winds up supremely irritated instead, at least there's more than enough guilt to go around.
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. 
