Day Seven: Afternoon

Menal/Physical: Feeling pretty good!
# Diapers Used: 26 -- 22 Meijer, 4 Abena

Well, I have to hand it to the folks at Abena--when they make a diaper, they really go all out. As you can tell from the top of this post, I have only gone through TWO diapers in the last 24 hours. Even then, I could have gone longer by the rules of the experiment; while wet, the Abenas didn't seem to be in any real danger of leaking. Still, there was NO WAY that I was going to get out of the shower and change back INTO a wet diaper!

But do these "super diapers" help save money or the environment? Let's look:

MONEY:
With shipping, the Abenas cost $25.98 for a package of 14--that's approximately $1.86 per diaper, or more than three and a half times the price of the Meijer diapers. With the Meijer diapers, I was going through six a day, on average. That means I was spending $3.12 per day. Going through two Abenas, I'm spending $3.72 per day. Not much savings going on there!

ENVIRONMENT:
You'd think that only using two diapers a day would be better than using six, and you'd be right... but only by a little. I don't have the time to get out the scales or measuring sticks right now, but here's what I can tell you:

By weight, there really isn't much difference between two wet Abena diapers and six wet Meijer diapers. Moisture trapped in an absorbent gel/pulp weighs about the same no matter what you do with it. The weight of all the other parts of the diaper are all pretty minimal--it's just various polymers and pulps.

In size, the Abena diapers are considerably larger and bulkier (maybe by 30%?) than the Meijer diapers. When wet, I can still "ball up" a Meijer diaper into a softball-sized wad. A similarly-folded Abena is about twice that size. They're bigger to begin with and hold a lot more liquid, so that's not really a surprise.