You can make a difference if you potty your infant. Parents of an individual family unit may think that one baby's worth of diapers doesn't have much impact on the planet. But when the diapers of thousands of babies are compiled, compacted or cleansed, the toll is staggering. It is our children and grandchildren who will have to deal with the mess we are making. You can effectively cut back on resource depletion and pollution and reduce your carbon footprint by using fewer diapers.

I learned about infant pottying in 1979 and used it with my third son. I had seen it used in India and was impressed with the way mothers and other caregivers communicated with babies and took care of their elimination needs in early infancy. It also immediately struck me as the most environmentally friendly way to handle toilet learning-an exciting prospect that further increased my desire to use this approach. I realized it could be adapted to a modern lifestyle by using diapers as a backup (rather than full time) between potty visits.

In industrialized countries, a child who is "conventionally" toilet-trained could have used 6,000 or more disposable diapers. That's a lot of garbage to clog our over-taxed landfills! And that's also a lot of trees! In addition, the yearly cost to taxpayers for diaper disposal is high.

Some environmentally conscious parents elect to use cloth diapers, which, in terms of the environment, may offer a slight improvement over disposables, but still expend valuable resources and cause pollution. By using relatively few cloth diapers and pottying the rest of the time, parents can conserve water, reduce electricity consumption and avoid using considerable amounts of polluting chemicals.

Laurie Boucke is the author of Infant Potty Training: A Gentle and Primeval Method Adapted to Modern Living; Infant Potty Training: With or Without Diapers, the Natural Way; and producer of The Potty Whisperer a DVD.