It's All About The Tush!
Maui’s First Sustainable Cloth-Diaper Delivery Service!
Calling all mommas! It’s easy for us to get caught up in the endless possibilities of products that are making a statement on our everyday lives. As evolving conscious consumers, we know how important it is to find products that aren’t only sustainable and ethical for you – but for your little one too! As a parent, one of the most important decisions you’ll make regarding the environment and your cute bebe’s are…diapers! It’s crazy to think that on average, babies go through 5,000 diapers before being potty trained! In addition to this, most parent’s end up using single-use diapers that end up in landfills. According to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency report, the bacteria within the fecal matter from disposable diapers often get introduced into the environment and end up polluting our waterways. So, what can you do to make sure that baby is spoiled with the perfect nappies that are good for the environment too?
We talked to mother, entrepreneur and girl boss, Mele Jones from Kōkua Diaper, Maui’s only cloth diaper delivery service to give us an inside scoop about her sustainable diaper brand and the benefits of cloth diapers.
How sustainable are your cloth diapers – supply chain, raw materials etc?
Sustainability is our specialty! And essentially, we are like the “Rent the Runway” of the diaper world. What’s so wonderful about a diaper service is the fact that when treated properly a cotton diaper has a life span of 6 years. Yes, you heard that right. 6 years! So just to put it into perspective one set of diapers (70 a week) will go to 6 families over 6 years. And for weary parents that are concerned about them getting cleaned. Our wash process is so effective that even the dirtiest of messes get cleaned and sanitary.
We work with a wonderful cotton mill that is GOTS certified. This was HUGE for us. We wanted to make sure that every corner of Kōkua Diaper was consciously assemble. No greenwashing here! The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) is recognized as the world’s leading processing standard for textiles made from organic fibers. It defines high-level environmental criteria along the entire organic textiles supply chain and requires compliance with social criteria as well.
All of our diapers are 100% organic cotton. It just didn’t make sense to use to synthetic fibers for our diaper service. Organic cotton uses less water than regularly farmed cotton and the seeds are non-gmo. In my opinion it just doesn’t get better than thirsty soft cotton to diaper a baby.
What’s the most difficult part about running a sustainable cloth-diaper service?
For us, the challenge has been educating people. Trying to normalizing something that is viewed as “difficult to do” or “cloth diapering is too expensive.” This is why we streamline everything for expecting parents and provide everything you need to diaper your keiki properly and efficiently! We literally take all the guesswork out, do the dirty work, and have made it affordable for Maui’s ‘ohana.
Tell us more about your cloth-diaper styles and prints.
I’m not really into the cutesy, baby fluff so we keep it on the gender neutral side. We do carry some cute silly prints for our diaper covers though to keep it fun. My favorite is one that has doughnuts on it. It’s pretty darn cute!
Whether you’ve got a one year old or a little one in your belly -- Kōkua Diaper is Maui’s most innovative approach to keeping your keiki’s tush planet-friendly and super cute too!
Words: Kiana Kanoa