Vikki Casey-Ahmed, of Latham, founded Sonrise Diaper Service after realizing the environmental impact diapering her twin boys in disposables was having. She was going through 10 disposable diapers per day per son. After going through more than 600 diapers in a month, and realizing those diapers would be sitting in a landfill and not breaking down for years, Casey-Ahmed decided to transition to cloth diapers.

“When you have multiples, you can actually, physically see the number of diapers going to a landfill,” she said.

Casey-Ahmed said she tends to be “a little over the top” with her environmental concerns, and she wanted to do everything she could to lessen the damage her diapers were causing.

Many people have misconceptions about the dirtiness of cloth diapers, Casey-Ahmed said.

“The cloth diaper itself, is just a rectangular piece of fabric, some people use them for burp cloths,” she said. To avoid using pins or fasteners, a plastic cover is placed on top of the cloth diaper that is also water proof and should prevent leaking. These covers are reusable and come in different prints.
Casey-Ahmed not only uses cloth diapers, she helps other parents use them too.

For a registration fee of $40, Casey-Ahmed will come to a client’s house and give a tutorial on how to put on and take off a cloth diaper with its cover. She will also make sure the baby has the correct size cloth diaper, and she offers her support in case there are any problems getting into the swing of using cloth diapers.

For $25 per week, she will deliver 100 fresh, clean cloth diapers per week and take the dirty diapers away.

She brings the dirty diapers to a commercial laundry facility, where she washes them and prepares them for a new week.

Her customers are in charge of supplying their own covers, though Sonrise Diaper Service does have two kinds of covers to purchase.

Although Casey-Ahmed has been passionate about cloth diapers not only through the diaper-days of her twin boys, who are now 3 years old, but also her now-9-month-old son, it was her friend Rebecca Rathbun who got her interested in the business aspect of it.

“She was explaining to one of our mutual friends how cloth diapering works,” said Rathbun. “It was really like a two-hour cloth diaper 101 class.”

Rathbun, who does not have children of her own, said she was amazed by how detailed cloth diapering can be and at how much Casey-Ahmed knew about it – from the environmental side to the health benefits of diapering children in cloth, which includes the lack of exposure to the chemicals used in disposable diapers.

By the end of the conversation, Casey-Ahmed had convinced everyone that cloth diapering was the way to go.

“I was ready to cloth diaper anything in the world. She had sold me,” said Rathbun.  “Nobody should have that kind of knowledge and not put it to use.”

Casey-Ahmed did decide to put it to use, and after opening her doors to provide information about her business on July 1, she finally opened officially on Aug. 1.

Sonrise Diaper Service is run out of Casey-Ahmed’s house, and in the past two weeks, she already has seen business begin to pick up with nearly seven clients.

Casey-Ahmed said she eventually hopes to open a storefront that is a combination of her cloth diaper service and an organic baby store, where parents can purchase products and children can learn about organic foods and why they are healthy.

For information about Sonrise Diaper Service, e-mail vikki@sonrisediaperservice.com, or call 461-4293 or visit Sonrise’s Web site at www.sonrisediaperservice.com.You can contact cohna@spotlightnews.com with any questions. Also, feel free to post comments below. Comments powered by Disqus

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