Traveling with little ones means a ton of packing, a ton of planning, a ton of stuff, a ton of snacks, and a ton of diapers (nappies for those of you in AUS).
In our modern world today, I would guess, about 95% of mom’s/mum’s, if not more, use disposable diapers because they are so convenient but they also produce a huge amount of waste.
Every diaper, every single one (even the ones that say they have some compostable materials), sits in landfill for upwards of 500 years. For all you parents out there, you know how many diapers you go through with these little people – that is a ton of waste and a huge environmental impact.
As mentioned in my Talkin’ Trash A Journey Towards Zero Waste Expeditioning blog, its very easy when you live an modern lifestyle to just throwing things away, and this is the case for diapers as well. How many of us just wrap them in plastic and throw them in a bin and not think about them again. But for this expedition, this isn’t an option for us. And considering how we are currently drowning our planet in plastic waste, it would be great to find a better, zero waste, equally convenient solution.
I have been asked many times about what we are doing for Morgan regarding diapers as she isn’t potty trained yet and we are endeavouring to spend three months out in the bush.
Since Morgan has been little, we have used a variety of diapers, and yes even the fully disposable ones, but really liked a product called gDiapers. Its basically a super cute pant with disposable inserts. They are great because the inserts are 100% compostable or flushable but the downside is you do have to do a bit more washing as sometimes the pants need a rinse when someones has had a blowout or some little person wiggled at just the wrong time.
For our expedition, we needed three main things in relation to diapers; we needed our diapering solution to be zero waste, not require washing (so really had to be disposable vs cloth or pant etc) and it had to be lightweight meaning packing in and packing out wasn’t wan option due to weight – used diapers are heavy and smelly!

gCycle
On average, Morgan goes through 7 diapers a day. When she was a newborn, this could be almost double. So for our expedition, we need 7 diapers a day, for three months, plus a few weeks contingency. So for our three months in the Outback, we need to take a total of 840 diapers!!
For our expedition, we have partnered with the awesome family who started gDiapers, and we are trailing their next generation of gDiapers, called gCycle. The gCycle product (the one we are taking) is made up of a commercial compostable body and a reusable wrap.

Compostable Body

Reusable Wrap – Front

Reusable Wrap – Back


Morgan loving her gCycle’s