The Art of Business

Disposing the Disposable Way:
Making Sense of Re-Usable, Cotton Diapers

Vicki Caston, Ron Rozman and Coleen Simms of
BetterWay Diaper Service

Every year, consumers buy thousands of pairs of wood pulp and plastic underwear, only to throw them out after just a few hours’ use. This happens even though the process kills billions of trees and adds millions of pounds of solid waste to our landfills for what some experts believe could take 500 years to decompose. Welcome to the world of disposable diapers.

Ron Rozman, owner and founder of BetterWay Diaper Service, a cotton diaper service for Ulster, Dutchess and Orange counties, was disgusted by those figures and took action against it. “We’re literally keeping millions of disposable diapers out of local landfills just because of what we’re doing,” he said, then lamented how most young people today automatically think of disposable diapers when they hear the word “diaper”. “Before disposables were invented in the sixties,” Rozman explained, “everyone used cotton.” And cotton diapers are far from disposable. At BetterWay, each cotton diaper gets approximately 200 uses before it’s considered a rag, and then sold to local auto-detailing shops before buried in landfills to decompose within about a year’s time.

BetterWay Diaper, a weekly service, has been delivering clean cotton diapers to households and picking up the dirty ones for the past 11 years. “You never have to go to the store,” Rozman boasted, even though that is, by far, not the greatest perk of using the service.

According to a pamphlet published by the New York State Consumer Protection Board, the average child uses 60 diapers per week and newborns as many as 80 per week, and by the time they are toilet trained, he or she will have used approximately 8,000 to 10,000 diapers in all. That’s a lot of waste, but think of it in terms of cost as well. The price of a 58-pack of Huggies Ultratrim diapers, for instance, goes for around $19.49, while 60 cotton diapers from BetterWay, costs $12.75 (including pickup and delivery).

Rozman also explained how in the 1960s, approximately 94 percent of 30-month-old babies were potty trained, as opposed to the approximately 30 percent today. “The reason is that kids aren’t uncomfortable peeing in disposable diapers,” he said, “and now they even make pull-ups for four and five year olds.”

Rozman also pH balances BetterWay’s cotton diapers to 5.5 every time they’re washed to prevent diaper rash. “That way the diaper isn’t too acidic or too alkaline,” he explained, “which is safe for babies’ delicate skin.”
Rozman was no entrepreneurial neophyte when he opened BetterWay in 1990. In 1972, he started Hudson Valley Magazine, and in 1979, he started Mid-Hudson Marketing, which handled such accounts as the Bardavon Opera House and the Mid-Hudson Civic Center. And although both of those businesses—which he is no longer involved with—were successful, he never quite experienced the satisfaction he has from working at his diaper service.
“What I do now really makes a difference on a daily basis,” he said. “I know that me and the three people who work with me are keeping millions of pounds of solid waste out of the landfills each year.”

—Josh Ripps

BetterWay Diaper Service is located at 64 Clarendon Ave., in Kingston. For more information, call 338-1211 or visit www.betterwaydiaperservice.com.