Making a statement with cloth diapers

Brad Nettles // The Post and Courier

Parents and babies socialize Saturday before the start of The Great Cloth Diaper Change at the Felix C. Davis Community Center in North Charleston.

If you think cloth diapers are just for hippie moms, think again -- you haven't met friends Brandi Wolfe and Elizabeth MacDonald of Summerville.

"We still wear high heels and designer jeans and use cloth diapers," MacDonald said. "It may be hippie-ish to cloth diaper, but we're still stylin'."

Wolfe and MacDonald brought their infant daughters, 19-month-old Ila and 20-month-old Scarlett Anne, respectively, to the inaugural Great Cloth Diaper Change at the Felix C. Davis Community Center in North Charleston on Saturday.

The international event was timed with Earth Day weekend to promote the environmental-friendlier use of cloth diapers, instead of disposable diapers.

At 12:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, people in 400 locations in 20 countries simultaneously changed cloth diapers to establish the first record in the Guinness Book of World Records, according to Katherine Loichinger, who organized the local event with four other, local cloth diaper business owners.

Parents brought about 100 babies to the local diaper change.

Loichinger says the benefits of using cloth diapers are not only environmental, but economic. Disposable diapers are expensive -- costing between $2,000 and $4,000 per baby. She also says cloth diapers are better for infants because they tend to get fewer rashes.

The official witness for the event was North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey, who said he was impressed at the numbers of babies at the event because it showed parents who "are very much engaged in the lives of their kids."

Summey added that the event was appropriate for North Charleston, which has made a concerted effort to change for the greener.

"We're all about green now, which is a long way from when we were known as the industrial hub of the Lowcountry. This fits into what we are trying to do -- make the quality of life as good as we can."

The event also underscored the local cottage industry that cloth diapers have created. The five organizers have cloth diaper businesses, including Lowcountry Diaper Parties by Everything Birth, Teeny Turtle, Modern Cloth, Cloth Diaper University and Bitty Bottoms.