http://www.mooregood.org/diapers

Brooklyn Diaper Project, 339 8th St, Brooklyn, NY 11215-3313, United States, New York, NY (2026)

10/10/2024

Hey there, new followers! 👋
More than four years into our project’s inception, our founder has gained invaluable insights into the diaper industry, leading to a significant evolution of her perspectives. As a way to reintroduce our diaper project, Wendy wrote a blog post that delves into our project’s core values, tracing our journey from its origins to our current achievements.
This post also sheds light on some crucial observations regarding how contemporary philanthropic forces and for-profit industrial companies might be unwittingly contributing to the escalating issue of diaper need. Drawing from her personal experiences operating a non-traditional diaper bank, Wendy shares some reflections on city leadership, city programs like participatory budgeting, and some uncomfortable truths about the underlying motivations of nonprofits, diaper banks, and for-profit ‘green’ diaper companies.
We firmly believe that diapers are a fundamental necessity, not a luxury. To effectively address diaper need, we must wholeheartedly embrace this belief, even as we confront the uncomfortable truths that must guide our path. In this blog post, she explores the paramount importance of diaper access - through working toward independence, not distribution- and proposes innovative solutions to tackle the diaper need crisis. Importantly, some of our most promising solutions have positive implications for other hygiene products as well, such as period products and adult hygiene products, benefiting populations across the lifespan who are in need.
Want to read more? Click our link in bio!

09/27/2024

Election season is upon us. In the midst of all the noise about whether Kamala is Brat or not, many of us may lose site of local questions and the ways in which who we elect to, say, city council or mayor, can have a profound impact.

Diaper need is a pressing issue in our communities, along with many of the other ills that come from a distribution of resources that leaves many—including children—in poverty. At the Brooklyn Diaper Project we do what we can to help, raising money and passing out hygiene supplies to those most impacted. But it often feels like band-aiding a lost limb. Real change will only come with policy change.

New York has worked in recent years to make some efforts to stem diaper need. But what we really need is systemic change that would make diapers accessible in every public restroom, just like toilet paper. We'd love to see policy changes that would allow us to bypass commercial diaper suppliers and manufacture hygiene supplies in our community, like the pad project in India.

This fall, we'll be keeping diaper need and childhood poverty in mind at the polls, and we hope that others will too. Public policy is the reason diapers aren't ubiquitous and publicly available. There's no essential fact about diapers that makes them worthy of being treated differently from toilet paper, which is publicly available in restrooms. In order to solve diaper need once and for all, that mentality has to change.

But until that happens, we'll be doing our part.

09/20/2024

Last chance to donate!
Make a difference in your community by participating in a diaper drive coordinated by CAMBA and P.S. 164 and drop off a pack of diapers before September 26th.

08/20/2024

NY has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the nation. In a 2022 study, our state ranked 41st in the nation, with 735,742 children living in poverty. New York's child poverty rate also ranked the second highest among the 5 states with similar large populations.

Poverty & its attendant ills, including inadequate hygiene supplies, have immediate effects on health. And yet while state & federal agencies pride themselves on combating one of the other results of child poverty–hunger–diaper need is largely overlooked. SNAP provides food for hungry children while hygiene supplies are treated as a luxury.

For families living in poverty, only direct cash assistance programs are structured to allow purchase of diapers. Unfortunately federal funding for cash assistance was set in 1996; its real value has fallen by 40% due to inflation, leaving fewer dollars for direct assistance.

While some experimental programs have been introduced to address these issues, NY families in poverty experiencing diaper need must depend on private charities & nonprofits. Such charities often rely wholly or primarily on private donations from individuals. Our diaper project, for example, is funded by individual donations–if you'd like to help solve diaper need by providing dollars for diapers visit www.mooregood.org/donate to donate.

Earlier this year The OCS at the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services awarded the NY State Community Action Assn. $1.1 million to help provide diapers to families.

As a non-profit, we’re always excited to see work like this happening. But at the same time we’re frustrated to see money flowing along the same paths to corporate diaper manufacturers. We would love to see an option for communities to be making diapers themselves, like when The Pad Project placed machines in communities in rural India, allowing communities to solve problems, cutting out the middleman.

Unfortunately, until the deep structural barriers to diaper access are removed, this problem will persist. Until that time we’ll keep doing our bit to put diapers in the hands of those who need them.

08/14/2024

If you’ve been paying attention to political commentary over the last few days, you’ve probably heard that “ ” is trending as a result of attempts to weaponize democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’ actions while governor of Minnesota.

In January of this year Walz signed into law HF44, making MN the 28th state to pass legislation providing access to hygiene products for students who menstruate, and the 9th to describe in writing how such a policy will be funded.

Providing menstrual products for students is vital to the goals of public education. Statistics show that each month roughly 500 million people experience period poverty--or an inability to afford menstrual hygiene supplies. When women and girls can’t afford hygiene supplies, they can’t fully participate in society. In a 2018 survey, 1 in 5 girls reported missing school due to period poverty.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because diaper poverty affects infants and their caregivers in the same ways. Like period poverty, diaper need is a public health crisis with consequences that cause ripple effects throughout society. Many of the parents who receive diapers from the community organizations we partner with report reusing dirty diapers or staying home from work because they can’t afford adequate hygiene supplies.

And yet despite the striking similarities, to date there has been far less of a push to provide diapers and related hygiene supplies in public restrooms. Like pads and tampons, diapers are a necessity, the absence of which can lead to health problems. Using a tampon too long can lead to toxic shock syndrome; reusing dirty diapers can cause utis and skin infections. And yet neither hygiene product is available through medicaid.

We’d love to see both menstrual hygiene supplies and diapers become as ubiquitous as toilet paper or soap, something that one expects to see in public restrooms. But in order to end period poverty and diaper need in NY, we’ll need to see action on a legislative level to make hygiene products publicly funded and available for all who need them. We need on steroids.

07/22/2024

This month we’re celebrating one year working with Commonpoint Queens!

Since 2018, when it was created following the merger of two other community based service organizations, Commonpoint has been providing a full range of support services to people of all ages, ability levels, stages of life and backgrounds. And since 2023, Commonpoint has been a Diaper Project partner!

Like the Diaper Project’s founders, the folks behind Commonpoint believe in being present to meet the evolving needs of our community. And one of the things they often hear from families experiencing financial crisis is that necessary hygiene supplies like diapers aren’t covered by SNAP or Medicaid.

Because Commonpoint’s team already had deep roots in the Queens community, when we first began discussing partnering with them to distribute diapers in the area last year it seemed like an opportunity we didn’t want to overlook. Since then we’ve worked with them to put thousands of diapers in the hands of families in need.

We’re thrilled to be working with Commonpoint in the coming year, putting smiles on the faces of local parents, and wanted to share a few photos with you showing just what a big difference diapers can make in individual lives.

07/13/2024

As you may have heard over the last few days, a recent study conducted by scientists at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health revealed that most popular tampon brands contained significant levels of metals like lead and arsenic.

In the US, hygiene products are subject to a patchwork of regulations: the FDA currently regulates tampons as Class II medical devices while pads and menstrual cups are considered exempt from regulatory guidance. Manufacturers of tampons are required to submit safety evaluations, including information about the product’s composition, but the agency does not require that manufacturers inform consumers of the presence of chemicals in their products.

Tampons–and other hygiene products–come into close contact with delicate tissues with a high potential for absorbing chemicals. And yet, as the primary author of the study, Jenni A. Shearston, notes “despite this large potential for public health concern, very little research has been done to measure chemicals in tampons.”

Toxic metals could make their way into tampons a number of ways: heavy metals like lead and arsenic are ubiquitous in our environment and the cotton could have absorbed the metals from water, air, soil, when it was still in the field. Alternatively–given the lack of oversight–metals might be added intentionally during manufacturing. Given the lack of federal regulations, we just don’t know what the Berkeley study was detecting.

This is all somewhat alarming news for those of us concerned with making sure that we are providing safe hygiene products for infants and children. If tampons, regulated more strictly than diapers, contain toxic metals, what might be in diapers?

But there is a bit of hope. Five years ago NY became the first state to require that manufacturers list all “intentionally added” ingredients in tampons and other menstrual supplies, but similar laws around diaper labeling lag behind. Over the past few years several bills which would require that diaper packages sold in NY be labeled with ingredients have failed, but AB43, which was voted on in the state senate last month might finally change that. We can only hope that federal regulators follow.

read more at https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/first-study-to-measure-toxic-metals-in-tampons-shows-arsenic-and-lead

06/25/2024

Earlier this month we were excited to mark the 4th year of our ongoing partnership with Camp Friendship by delivering 8100 diapers to their door!

The Brooklyn Diaper Project tries our hardest to work efficiently so that every dollar we raise can go towards helping those most in need. We do this by partnering with organizations like Camp Friendship that are already embedded in the community and connected to our neighbors who are housing insecure or facing financial hardship and in need of hygiene supplies to keep their little ones clean and healthy. We also work primarily in the digital space–to avoid overhead costs–and negotiate to buy diapers in bulk. One day we hope to help local organizations produce diapers themselves, but until then we’ll be doing our best to keep New York babies diapered.

It’s always exciting to do a bulk delivery to one of our partners, because we know that we’re making a difference in the community. Want to help? Even small donations, when combined, can make a mighty dent in diaper need!

photo courtesy of Camp Friendship

05/24/2024

When we initially launched the Brooklyn Diaper Project four years ago, our goal was to assuage an immediate need for diapers by working with individual families- one case at a time. While anyone can experience diaper need–statistics state that 1 in 2 U.S. families cannot afford enough diapers to keep their young children clean, dry, and healthy–young parents, people of color, the unhoused, and other vulnerable groups are most likely to experience diaper need. By making diapers available in public toilets, libraries, soup kitchens, and other places we hoped to help treat a systemic issue.⁠
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Our initial goal was to obtain funding for and distribute 1M diapers, a figure that seemed fantastical in 2020. We spoke then of “ending diaper need”. But now that we’re past the halfway mark we’re pausing to think. ⁠
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Four years ago when we spoke of ‘ending’ diaper need we were thinking in terms of the harms caused by diaper need, both psychological and physiological, and how we could prevent the most vulnerable among us from suffering. But diaper need is itself the result of a system that runs on discriminatory lines. 1 million or ten million diapers are still a bandaid on this terrible problem. As long as economic inequality and corporate greed exist, so will expensive petroleum-based disposable diapers–and diaper need.⁠
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What if instead of treating the symptoms of our social ills, we actually worked to fix the underlying cause? What if we worked not just to end diaper need, but to solve it?⁠
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We’re hoping to solve diaper need by creating an earth-conscious diaper that can be inexpensively manufactured by local community organizations. For now, we’re still partnering with local organizations to distribute diapers purchased in bulk by donors like you–and we're incredibly proud to do so. But we refuse to accept that diaper need is a problem that can’t be solved.⁠
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Read our founder Wendy Moore’s blog post on rethinking diaper manufacturing by following the link above.⁠
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04/25/2024

This week, in honor of Earth Day, we're looking forward to a future where all caretakers and babies have access to hygiene supplies that are not only freely available but also environmentally friendly. Obviously, since we're still living in a country where up to 50% of families struggle to afford diapers for their little ones, we're not there yet, but at the Moore Family Charitable Foundation, we firmly believe that we can work to solve the access problem without compromising our commitment to a healthier planet. In fact, we believe that working to solve the problems of diaper access and pollution in tandem may very well be the way forward.

In that spirit, we have been discussing ways to create a better diaper–one that is not only less expensive to produce but also made with our planet rather than profit in mind–with Huipu Gao and Ajoy Sarkar of . Drs. Gao and Sarkar have enlisted the help of several of their students interested in textile development to solve our diaper problem with us.

While our partners at FIT are still working on a proof of concept using commercially available materials, we’re thrilled to share these photos of their progress with you and hope one day soon to be able to inexpensively manufacture a diaper using locally available–and renewable–materials like seaweed and oyster shells.

PHOTOS: 1) Samantha Galanti uses chitosan, found in oyster shells, to produce a super absorbent polymer that could be used in diapers 2) Braden Ward experiments with alginate that would replace the plastic lining used in most commercially available disposables 3) a thin layer of alginate film serves as a bio-plastic moisture barrier 4) several students who are enrolled in Dr. Brian Hanssen’s Communication for Consulting course at & have volunteered to help in the next phase of the diaper manufacturing project joined us at FIT last week to see the biopolymers in action; the full team is pictured from left: Nikhita Ramakrishnan, Aastha Girotra, and Charul Passey (Stern), followed by our own Wendy Moore, and Samantha Galanti, Dr. Gao, and Dr. Sarkar of FIT

04/15/2024

As anyone who has attempted to purchase diapers with the health of their baby—or the planet—in mind has noticed, hygiene product packaging is typically less than transparent when it comes to disclosing the materials included. But did you know that this was because diaper manufacturers are under no legal obligation to disclose ingredients on their packaging?

Earlier this week we were excited to learn that NY Assembly Bill 43 was approved in the lower house with a vote of 128 to 22. The bill, sponsored by Linda Rosenthal of NYC, would require manufacturers to list diaper ingredients on packages—a boon to consumers and organizations like our own!

Rosenthal, who also sponsored legislation five years ago which made NY the first state in the nation requiring menstrual products be labeled with similar information, has been campaigning for transparency in diaper manufacturing for years. Two similar bills over the past few years have been left to languish in committee, but we are encouraged both by the overwhelming support the bill received and by the recent success of the bill requiring that menstrual hygiene products be labeled.

This is, of course, just a first step, and the state senate will need to pass a companion bill before the legislation can become a reality, but if diaper manufacturers are required to label their products with ingredient lists, it will boost the efforts made by individuals—and organizations—to treat the planet better.

When we negotiate with diaper manufacturers to purchase bulk orders of diapers for our clients, we always try to keep ingredients in mind because we believe that EVERYONE deserves healthy options AND because we believe that keeping the planet healthy for future generations is a non-negotiable part of our pledge to help others. But the current state of diaper packaging, which generally obfuscates information about the materials making up these intimate hygiene products, makes this incredibly difficult. That's why we're incredibly excited by the potential AB43 represents. We'll be watching this legislation carefully!

03/12/2024

Our founder & executive director, Wendy Moore, was recently nominated to be honored by her alma mater Teachers College this month on the third annual Day! We'd love to encourage you to vote by following the link above, but first Wendy wanted to share some thoughts with you:⁠
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“Before I started the Brooklyn Diaper Project & Lazy Point Farms I attended Teachers College, an incredible institution that helped shape some of our country's best leaders, thinkers, activists, & creatives. This experience shaped my current work in so many significant ways.⁠
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A vote for me isn't just for me. It's a vote of confidence in the things I've produced over these past few years & a testament to the school that shaped my approach to the progress I've been able to make so far. If I hadn't gone to TC, I'd probably just be running another diaper bank the old-fashioned way and would be thinking about kelp as a piece of an economic puzzle, not approaching it from the perspective that kelp has a place at the core of American ingenuity, life, classrooms, & conversation. If I hadn't gone to TC, I can tell you I would have never thought to merge my two ideas together by developing a diaper prototype with sustainable materials nor developed the audacity to ask myself the big questions of how to start these two programs—from scratch. It's no surprise that TC sits at the foundation of my progress.⁠
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A vote for me is a vote that can give my work some legs. With increased exposure & recognition through a 'win', a few more NYC eyes might land on what I am trying to do in developing a diaper prototype made of kelp & oyster shells. More people might start buying NYS kelp to make kelp leather & beauty products & food & plastics. A win isn't for me—it's a win to propel my ideas & forge new connections with folks out there who might not know what I'm doing yet but who have ideas, connections, or resources to contribute.”⁠
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Please mark your calendars for TC's Impact Day this Wednesday, March 13; whether or not you're a proud TC student or alum, it's a great day to pause & reflect on how you can increase your impact on causes & people in your lives!

Brooklyn Diaper Project

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