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The cost of bedwetting: to you and the environment

December 01, 2018 2 min read

The environmental aspects of stopping bedwetting

Many parents and caregivers will use plastic-lined disposable diapers or pull-ups for their bedwetting child. The use of these pull-ups can continue up to the age of 10 and beyond. Calculating from the age of 5 (when bedwetting is considered to be a problem worth solving) through the age of 10 years, using one pull-up per day, 2200 pull-ups will be used by one bedwetting child in that time. In the USA, for example, there are approximately 7-9 million bedwetters over the age of 5 years, and, with one pull-up per day per child, that is around 3,000,000,000 pull-ups used per year in the USA. From 5 to 10 years there will be approximately 18,000,000,000 pull-ups used. In fact many children use more than one pull-up at night, and so the figure is conservative.

Most households simply dispose of them in the normal rubbish collection system, and they end up in land-fills. Apart from being a public health hazard, these pull-ups, because they are wrapped tightly in their plastic covering, have been estimated to take 500 years to decompose in a modern land-fill. The cumulative quantity of pull-ups in land-fill is staggering.

At around $1.00 each, the cost is $365.00 per year, or $2,190.00 during the period of bedwetting. Some families may have to spend more, and some less, but that is the average.

Moreover there are suggestions from some professionals that using a pull-up actually prolongs the period of bedwetting, because the child has little motivation for change.

Therefore, using a DRI Sleeper® bedwetting alarm costing around $80 is saving the family up to $2,000, and there is evidence that a child's self-esteem increases significantly.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that a bedwetting alarm can significantly reduce the accumulation of billions of pull-ups in land-fills, and their legacy of waste that can be there for up to 500 years.

 

Choose the alarm that is right for you