Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 31, 1990 TAG: 9005310157
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The story was about the Virginia General Assembly's call in January for a study on the environmental impact of disposable diapers. Its last sentence: "Roanoke has no diaper services."
To Corcoran, it was a challenge. To Tom and Jeannette Prest, an idea whose time had come. And to Reid Thibodeaux, it was enough to set entrepreneurial instincts in motion.
Each has big plans for the dirty diapers of Roanoke, plans that could result in the opening of three area diaper services - Crystal Spring Linen Service, Earth Baby and Bottoms Up.
Already, Earth Baby is in its third month of "picking up the dirties and leaving the cleans," as owner Jeannette Prest puts it. Corcoran of Crystal Spring has a target opening date of June 25. And Bottoms Up's Thibodeaux hopes to start up within two weeks.
All three are hoping to fill the gap that was left when Stork Diaper Service closed its doors in 1987 after 40 years of service, a victim of a diminishing customer base and the convenience-driven frenzy that started in 1961 when Procter & Gamble invented Pampers.
Why are these folks so sure they can wrest back the business that Pampers and company took from Stork?
Because the environment is in. As Prest says, "It's cool to load up the back of your Jeep Cherokee with your grocery bags of aluminum, glass and paper and head down to the recycling station."
It's also cool to pick cotton over plastic where diapers are concerned. Just ask the fledgling diaper dealers, who can spout off statistics like they're reading from a Sierra Club newsletter:
The average infant soils between 7,000 and 10,000 diapers before mastering the toilet.
Americans throw away 18 billion disposable diapers a year, 1 percent of what goes into landfills each year.
Disposables may take as long as 500 years to break down. While manufacturers of disposables have refuted these claims and have even attempted to produce a biodegradable diaper, environmental experts contend that a baby's disposed-of diaper will linger on the Earth far longer than he or she will.
The list goes on - despite the fact that 87 percent of Americans say they still prefer disposables, giving producers annual sales of more than $3.5 billion.
And that convenience factor shouldn't be taken lightly, warns Howard Cayton, owner of the defunct Stork. Cayton has been called upon for advice by each of the new Roanoke services - and his predictions have not been optimistic.
"Towards the end, we lost so much money that I doubt they can be successful unless there's a law banning disposable diapers," Cayton says of the new services.
Talk like that hasn't stopped Earth Baby and the likes, all of whom are banking that environmental concerns will far outweigh the convenience of throwaways.
And they're not alone. The National Association of Diaper Services receives 50 to 75 inquiries a day from people who want to start new services, reporting a 38-percent increase in business in the past year.
"Everyone will tell you they thought of it," says Mary Trammell, co-owner of Blacksburg's Mother Earth Diaper Service, the first of the new services to open in Southwest Virginia. "But not many people have done anything about it."
So far, Mother Earth has grown from a handful of customers when it opened in February to about 50. Roanoke's Earth Baby reports a similarly growing client list - not bad for a business run out of the couple's Raleigh Court home and an old, donated van.
Morning deliveries are usually handled by 28-year-old Jeannette Prest, who's accompanied by her 1-year-old Ryan. After a subcontracted laundry cleans the diapers, Prest and her husband Tom, a counselor, spend early evenings folding and packing up for the 6 1 DIAPERS Diapers next morning's work.
The idea was conceived during the eighth month of Jeannette's pregnancy, when she looked into using a diaper service and found there were none. On a one-year maternity leave from her job as a physical therapy assistant, Jeannette soon after decided to make dirty diapers a full-time career.
So much for a restful leave of absence. "I've never worked so hard in my life," says Jeannette.
Earth Baby's service, which runs from $10 to $11 a week, includes weekly diaper deliveries as well as a plastic cover with Velcro fasteners, which holds the diapers in place without pins.
While price and service are similar at each of the businesses, the two other planned diaper services will use a different approach. Crystal Spring and Bottoms Up both will have their own office spaces where the washing will be handled by staff rather than subcontracted.
Crystal Spring's Corcoran, a former health-care manager, has already purchased the old Roanoke Garment Co. building at Albemarle Avenue and Williamson Road, and a hefty chunk of laundry equipment. For some of her labor needs, she is setting up a re-entry employment program for the mentally handicapped - an approach that Bottoms Up plans to take as well.
"It gives them a chance to work and make a living, and it gives me a tax credit," says Thibodeaux, a bartender at the Squeeze Inn and a former sales executive.
Says Corcoran, "It's my own microcosm of social change."
Through friends and word of mouth, Corcoran says she has a ready-and-waiting clientele of mothers. An association with Lewis-Gale Hospital's Our First program for first-time expectant mothers has also provided Thibodeaux a waiting list.
All three services would like to get some business from area nursing homes and hospitals, where disposables are typically used for both babies and the incontinent elderly.
One Virginia hospital, St. Mary's in Richmond, recently made the news when it announced it would switch back to cloth from disposables for environmental reasons and because cloth is less irritating to babies' sensitive skin. Last year, St. Mary's used 75,000 diapers for its 2,000 babies.
While at least one area hospital, Radford Community Hospital, has never switched from cloth, most hospitals use disposables. Officials at the three Roanoke hospitals reported that disposables are still being used.
Lewis-Gale is currently investigating the feasibility of switching to cloth; Roanoke Memorial and Community have not yet discussed switching, officials said.
by CNB