Tigh-Na-Mara’s Salon A might not be a phone booth, but a group of super men and women plan on doing a lot of changing there this month.
Diaper changing, to be exact.
Megan Olsen has signed on to host one of 400 worldwide sites of the Great Cloth Diaper Change on Sat., April 23 — a global attempt at a Guinness Book world record, and a way to raise the profile of cloth diapers.
Olsen is the owner of Cushy Tushy Bum Apparel and More out of her home in Errington. She says she became a proponent of cloth diapers with her second child and after learning about the extreme environmental impacts of disposable diapers.
Canadians, she explained, use up to 6,000 disposable diapers per year, per child. That amounts to 4.7 billion disposable diapers in landfills across the country.
Cloth, she asserted, is reuseable and has less impact in that way.
Throw in the savings a family can see in using cloth, and for Olsen, it was a done deal. A deal that got her into her own home-based and online business.
“Depending on brand or make, someone can spend anywhere from $200 to $1,000 on cloth diapers from the period from newborn to potty training,” she explained.
“With disposables, you could be spending up to $20 or $30 every three days. It can be expensive.”
Olsen said she first tried cloth with her first child four years ago, but says even then, selection and quality weren’t what she wanted.
Today, she carries 10 different brands in her store, and has accessories, totes and cleaning supplies that make using cloth diapers a breeze.
Since opening Cushy Tushy last September, Olsen said she has seen steady growth an interest in her services, and being a part of the Great Cloth Diaper Change will only help.
“The response has been going well,” she said. “It seems every month it’s growing more and more. At this point, that’s all I can ask for.”
To take part in the diaper change record attempt, Olsen said she needs 25 people to change their children into cloth diapers at the event. Even if people do not have any cloth, it’s okay for them to change from disposables to cloth, or from cloth to cloth.
Changing a baby into anything but cloth would void the attempt.
There are some other rules: the changing has to happen exactly at 9 a.m. on April 23, and; children must be 39 inches tall or shorter.
For Olsen, the event, while fun, is designed to raise awareness of cloth diaper use and benefits to the environment.
She has even enlisted the support of Nanaimo-Alberni federal Green Party candidate Myron Jesperson, who she says raised his own children on cloth.
To pre-register for the Great Diaper Change world record attempt, sign up at Hard Candy Baby Boutique, Shades of Green or by e-mailing Olsen at cushytushybum@yahoo.ca.
To find out more about her business, visit www.cushytushy.ca.
editor@pqbnews.com