I tried Pampers, Honest and DYPER brand diapers - this is what I think

If you have a child in diapers in your life, I recommend giving this a read. If you don’t - maybe you can forward it to someone who does.

In November last year, we welcomed our little girl to the world. It was as smooth as we could have hoped, and now we get to wake up in the morning to a gorgeous little girl. This also means we get to dedicate a fair amount of time each week changing her diaper.

I decided to try a few different brands of diapers because I wanted both the best value, and to limit our environmental impact.

In this process, I wandered down a rabbit hole and found some pretty staggering statistics: Did you know that disposable diapers account for a third of landfill waste? They make up 50% of newborn’s household’s trash, adding up to over 18 billion disposable diapers in the landfill a year! Then when you consider that a single diaper can take 500 years to biodegrade and that a child average between 6,000-7,000 diapers in their first 2.5 years of life and you might have a hard time lifting your chin off the floor (healtheplanet.com).

It made me consider cloth diapering, which was the traditional way to deal with diapers as recent as the 1950s, and is making a comeback. I have to be honest though, cleaning poop out of a piece of cloth doesn’t make me jump for joy. Then I saw an Esembly ad that said “it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Replacing just 3 diapers a day reduces your use by 1,000 a year.”

I decided to try it. I still had no interest in cleaning poop out of diapers, I managed to figure out my daughter’s bathroom schedule. I don’t always get it completely right, but generally after her first poop diaper of the day I can swap to cloth diapers and only have to change pee diapers until mid-afternoon.

I don’t know for sure if I truly replace 3 disposable diapers a day, but I like to think I do. This means I do still use disposable diapers, and I wanted to be intentional with the brands I chose (which, if you remember, is how I started down this rabbit hole).

In this process I was also diligent in finding out where the diapers were made. I was disappointed to find many diapers are manufactured in China. This is problematic for a few reasons. Economically we rely far to heavily on China as a country, so the fewer items we buy from them the better. Environmentally speaking, it seems irresponsible to ship items half way around the world just for the purpose of tossing them into the trash after a few hours of use.

So here is my honest review of the three brands I tried:

PAMPERS (4/5)

These are the first ones I used, and they’re the ones I used as my standard to measure the others against. They fit well, didn’t leak, have a wetness indicator and my daughter has never had an adverse reaction. You can also find these at nearly every store that carries diapers.

Their wipes are all manufactured in the USA. This is the only brand I’ve found that this is the case, and I like them just as well as any others I’ve tried. They also have a rewards system, you just need to download the app they advertise on their packaging.

DYPER (0/5)

I hated these. The worst part is that they gave my daughter an awful rash, it took less than a day and three diapers to give her literal blisters. They were awful. I would never recommend.

These are made from Bamboo to help it degrade quicker in the environment, but they are super bulky. Plus they’re made in China, and because of the bulk this means that they take up a lot of space. Any environmental goodness by making them out of Bamboo is lost by have to ship them across the world.

The return process was simple enough, they supplied a return shipping label but their restocking fee seemed really high.

I tried their wipes too, they were fine but also unfortunately also made in China.

HONEST (4/5)

These have a really thin profile, but surprisingly hold just as well as Pampers. These don’t leak, plus they have the most adorable designs. Another big plus is that they are manufactured in Mexico, which means the energy required to transport them to the US is a fraction of that needed to ship diapers from China. Not as good as being made in the USA, but still pretty good.

You can order these on subscription and earn store credit to apply to future purchases or you can find them at major retailers.

I also tried their wipes, they were fine but made in China so for that reason they are not my first choice.

I cannot speak on any other brand, because I have not tried them, but hopefully these reviews are helpful for you. I will also say, none of these companies paid me for these reviews, nor am I an affiliate for any of them.

Thanks for being here! I look forward to sharing more with you soon.

Cheers!