If you remember, we launched a Twitter, blog, and video campaign called #operationfluffy to convince The Ellen Show to feature modern cloth diapers on the show. The campaign had hundreds of people involved who tweeted and taped their babies dancing for our You Tube video of babies in cloth.
Then I got word from a diaper maker who was told they would be on The Mother’s Day show. I was happy and sad. I was happy to see cloth diapers on the show but sad only one type and brand would be presented.
Unfortunately, cloth diapers were bumped because Huggies stepped in with their ridiculous “cloth like” jean diapers. You know what else is like cloth? CLOTH.
And, lets be honest. Even if you use disposables, how ridiculous are these? It makes baby girls look like hoochie mamas in cut off booty jean shorts. And boys, well, erm, I am not gonna touch that with a ten foot pole. But lets just say it looks ridiculous.
I am torn. I was under the impression Ellen was very green. She said on her show “If there’s one thing that all babies need — it’s diapers, and lots of ‘em!” Not really. 12-36 in total will do, none of which end up in the landfill. A friend suggested I tally up how many diapers Ellen gave away which will then end up in the landfill. The entire audience received a 6 month supply of Huggies.
I was not able to find concrete numbers as to how many seats the studio holds. I did find an account of a woman who attended the show who knew that there are a guaranteed 150 seats for out of town guests. Meaning there are more than 150. I am going to guess there are another 100 seats, for my purposes. Maybe more, maybe less.
250 audience members received a 6 months supply of Huggies.
The average baby goes through 8 diapers a day.
That baby will use 1,456 diapers in that time frame.
So lets say Huggies gives those families 1,456 diapers.
Multiply that by 250 guests.
Ellen essentially put 364,000 diapers into a landfill.*
These guests could have had cloth diapers! In a perfect world that would have kept 364,000 diapers out of the trash.
Like I said, I am dissapointed. I understand she is running a business and Huggies poured millions into her show in the form of advertising. Cloth diaper companies, even the biggest, couldn’t do that.
Ellen, we want you to think about the influence you have on the country. Think of the good you can do for environment if you promote the use of cloth.
You can tell The Ellen Show how you feel.
Tweet your comments (please be nice) to @TheEllenShow and use the hashtag #operationfluffy.
*I pulled these numbers from the air based on guesses. Obviously that is not a correct number. But it is demonstrative of how many diapers will be thrown away by those parents.
