Brooklyn Diaper Project

Election season is upon us. In the midst of all the noise about whether Kamala is Brat or not, many of us may lose site of local questions and the ways in which who we elect to, say, city council or mayor, can have a profound impact.

Diaper need is a pressing issue in our communities, along with many of the other ills that come from a distribution of resources that leaves many—including children—in poverty. At the Brooklyn Diaper Project we do what we can to help, raising money and passing out hygiene supplies to those most impacted. But it often feels like band-aiding a lost limb. Real change will only come with policy change.

New York has worked in recent years to make some efforts to stem diaper need. But what we really need is systemic change that would make diapers accessible in every public restroom, just like toilet paper. We'd love to see policy changes that would allow us to bypass commercial diaper suppliers and manufacture hygiene supplies in our community, like the pad project in India.

This fall, we'll be keeping diaper need and childhood poverty in mind at the polls, and we hope that others will too. Public policy is the reason diapers aren't ubiquitous and publicly available. There's no essential fact about diapers that makes them worthy of being treated differently from toilet paper, which is publicly available in restrooms. In order to solve diaper need once and for all, that mentality has to change.

But until that happens, we'll be doing our part.

If you’ve been paying attention to political commentary over the last few days, you’ve probably heard that “ ” is trending as a result of attempts to weaponize democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’ actions while governor of Minnesota.

In January of this year Walz signed into law HF44, making MN the 28th state to pass legislation providing access to hygiene products for students who menstruate, and the 9th to describe in writing how such a policy will be funded.

Providing menstrual products for students is vital to the goals of public education. Statistics show that each month roughly 500 million people experience period poverty--or an inability to afford menstrual hygiene supplies. When women and girls can’t afford hygiene supplies, they can’t fully participate in society. In a 2018 survey, 1 in 5 girls reported missing school due to period poverty.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because diaper poverty affects infants and their caregivers in the same ways. Like period poverty, diaper need is a public health crisis with consequences that cause ripple effects throughout society. Many of the parents who receive diapers from the community organizations we partner with report reusing dirty diapers or staying home from work because they can’t afford adequate hygiene supplies.

And yet despite the striking similarities, to date there has been far less of a push to provide diapers and related hygiene supplies in public restrooms. Like pads and tampons, diapers are a necessity, the absence of which can lead to health problems. Using a tampon too long can lead to toxic shock syndrome; reusing dirty diapers can cause utis and skin infections. And yet neither hygiene product is available through medicaid.

We’d love to see both menstrual hygiene supplies and diapers become as ubiquitous as toilet paper or soap, something that one expects to see in public restrooms. But in order to end period poverty and diaper need in NY, we’ll need to see action on a legislative level to make hygiene products publicly funded and available for all who need them. We need on steroids.

As you may have heard over the last few days, a recent study conducted by scientists at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health revealed that most popular tampon brands contained significant levels of metals like lead and arsenic.

In the US, hygiene products are subject to a patchwork of regulations: the FDA currently regulates tampons as Class II medical devices while pads and menstrual cups are considered exempt from regulatory guidance. Manufacturers of tampons are required to submit safety evaluations, including information about the product’s composition, but the agency does not require that manufacturers inform consumers of the presence of chemicals in their products.

Tampons–and other hygiene products–come into close contact with delicate tissues with a high potential for absorbing chemicals. And yet, as the primary author of the study, Jenni A. Shearston, notes “despite this large potential for public health concern, very little research has been done to measure chemicals in tampons.”

Toxic metals could make their way into tampons a number of ways: heavy metals like lead and arsenic are ubiquitous in our environment and the cotton could have absorbed the metals from water, air, soil, when it was still in the field. Alternatively–given the lack of oversight–metals might be added intentionally during manufacturing. Given the lack of federal regulations, we just don’t know what the Berkeley study was detecting.

This is all somewhat alarming news for those of us concerned with making sure that we are providing safe hygiene products for infants and children. If tampons, regulated more strictly than diapers, contain toxic metals, what might be in diapers?

But there is a bit of hope. Five years ago NY became the first state to require that manufacturers list all “intentionally added” ingredients in tampons and other menstrual supplies, but similar laws around diaper labeling lag behind. Over the past few years several bills which would require that diaper packages sold in NY be labeled with ingredients have failed, but AB43, which was voted on in the state senate last month might finally change that. We can only hope that federal regulators follow.

read more at https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/first-study-to-measure-toxic-metals-in-tampons-shows-arsenic-and-lead

Earlier this month we were excited to mark the 4th year of our ongoing partnership with Camp Friendship by delivering 8100 diapers to their door!

The Brooklyn Diaper Project tries our hardest to work efficiently so that every dollar we raise can go towards helping those most in need. We do this by partnering with organizations like Camp Friendship that are already embedded in the community and connected to our neighbors who are housing insecure or facing financial hardship and in need of hygiene supplies to keep their little ones clean and healthy. We also work primarily in the digital space–to avoid overhead costs–and negotiate to buy diapers in bulk. One day we hope to help local organizations produce diapers themselves, but until then we’ll be doing our best to keep New York babies diapered.

It’s always exciting to do a bulk delivery to one of our partners, because we know that we’re making a difference in the community. Want to help? Even small donations, when combined, can make a mighty dent in diaper need!

photo courtesy of Camp Friendship

When we initially launched the Brooklyn Diaper Project four years ago, our goal was to assuage an immediate need for diapers by working with individual families- one case at a time. While anyone can experience diaper need–statistics state that 1 in 2 U.S. families cannot afford enough diapers to keep their young children clean, dry, and healthy–young parents, people of color, the unhoused, and other vulnerable groups are most likely to experience diaper need. By making diapers available in public toilets, libraries, soup kitchens, and other places we hoped to help treat a systemic issue.⁠
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Our initial goal was to obtain funding for and distribute 1M diapers, a figure that seemed fantastical in 2020. We spoke then of “ending diaper need”. But now that we’re past the halfway mark we’re pausing to think. ⁠
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Four years ago when we spoke of ‘ending’ diaper need we were thinking in terms of the harms caused by diaper need, both psychological and physiological, and how we could prevent the most vulnerable among us from suffering. But diaper need is itself the result of a system that runs on discriminatory lines. 1 million or ten million diapers are still a bandaid on this terrible problem. As long as economic inequality and corporate greed exist, so will expensive petroleum-based disposable diapers–and diaper need.⁠
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What if instead of treating the symptoms of our social ills, we actually worked to fix the underlying cause? What if we worked not just to end diaper need, but to solve it?⁠
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We’re hoping to solve diaper need by creating an earth-conscious diaper that can be inexpensively manufactured by local community organizations. For now, we’re still partnering with local organizations to distribute diapers purchased in bulk by donors like you–and we're incredibly proud to do so. But we refuse to accept that diaper need is a problem that can’t be solved.⁠
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Read our founder Wendy Moore’s blog post on rethinking diaper manufacturing by following the link above.⁠
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