Killea’s Diaper Labeling Bill Fails to Attract Needed Votes

A proposal by Sen. Lucy Killea (D-San Diego) to require environmental warning labels on packages of disposable diapers died--again--when it failed to garner enough votes Tuesday in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee. However, it could be brought up for reconsideration today.

The committee voted 8-7 to scuttle Killea’s measure requiring a label on disposable diaper packages warning that “single-use disposable diapers create significant environmental problems and costs to the community when disposed.” The bill would have required manufacturers to label diaper packages by Jan. 1, 1992, or face a $50 fine per package.

Killea’s measure has received strong opposition from Proctor & Gamble, the makers of Pampers disposables, and Kimberly-Clark, makers of Huggies, who claim the bill unfairly singles out disposable diapers as an environmental hazard. The companies have argued that the alternative being touted by Killea--old-fashioned cloth diapers--is even more environmentally offensive because they dirty six times more water during cleaning than disposable diapers, which are designed to be rinsed once before being thrown away.

“The whole objective is to put a user of the product on a guilt trip,” Gene Hill, Kimberly-Clark’s regional director of state government relations, said about Killea’s measure.

Killea, however, says the water claims are exaggerated, and underscored to legislative colleagues Tuesday that her measure is not a tax or a ban. She said it is a way to educate consumers about the environmental consequences of disposable diapers, which account for 2% of the solid wastes generated each year by Californians. She says the 2.5 million single-use diapers thrown away annually by Californians would be enough to pave Interstate 5 from the Mexican border to Oregon.

The conflicting claims prompted Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria) to observe that the disposable diaper debate represented “two environmental problems coming to a loggerhead--the disposal issue versus water use.” O’Connell, considered sympathetic to recycling issues, represents drought-stricken Santa Barbara.

Voting against the measure was Assemblywoman Sunny Mojonnier (R-Encinitas), who claimed the Killea bill would also have required labels on incontinent supplies for the elderly. Diapers for the elderly are exactly the same product, only bigger, she said.

The label proposal was killed in the Senate. But it was restored last month by another Assembly committee before being sent along in the legislative process. California is one of 25 states considering measures to label or ban disposable diapers.