SacredLeadership Blog

Sacred Leadership and 3,000 Pounds of Dirty Diapers

February 11th, 2007 by jdavis

Now certainly that got your attention! But honestly it does have a connection with Sacred Leadership. Did you know that the average child in the developed world uses nearly 3,000 pounds of disposable diapers by age 2? Shocking! The March 2007 ODE (www.odemagazine.com) article “Diaper dharma” highlights the work of Swedish lawyer Marlene Sandberg who decided to do something about it.

“Ms. Sandberg was pregnant with her second child and couldn’t bear the thought of adding to this little-recognized environmental problem. She began searching for a disposble diaper that contained no chemicals or plastic and would biodegrade naturally.”

She found that none existed and went on to form the Nature Babycare company in the late 1990’s. She has found it difficult to compete with large multinational corporations, but has continued to grow offering her superior environmentally sensitive products at a competitive price. She continues to turn down offers of support from companies that do not share her ideals even though such support would help the “bottom line.”

Ms. Sandberg exemplifies the Sacred Leader by running a values based company that is mission dirven to serve the common good. We all can learn from her example.

3 Responses to “Sacred Leadership and 3,000 Pounds of Dirty Diapers”

on 12 Feb 2007 at 10:01 am1 Kathy

Great idea! Too bad I couldn’t get those diapers when my kids were little! Another problem with diapers in the developed world is that kids wear them for so long. In developing countries, families have the incentive to get their kids potty-trained asap.
Yes, it’s amazing how many resources we waste here. I try not to, but it’s a struggle.
on 12 Feb 2007 at 10:53 am2 Tom Reynolds

Hi Jim
I think you are doing a great job! Love your website too
Keep it up!!!
TR
on 09 Mar 2007 at 2:10 am3 Dave Flomerfelt

Jim, I guess a lot of people have forgotten the old ways of doing things (at least when wwe were kids). It was called the diaper service. They delivered clean diapers every week and they were made of cotten (biodegradeable) all you needed were plastic covers. I wonder if the service died because people stopped as many kids (like us from the baby boom generation) so it was no longer an economically profitable? However I do remember changing diapers and those Huggies were handy and you did not have to worry about sticking the kid with a safety pin, maybe they could use Velcro tabs on the cotten.

This is an interesting project you have taken on. In thirty years of running power plants, I found one of the bigest problems was no one was allowed to be a real leader and take respobsiblity because to much money was involved anytime something went wrong. Then suddenly it always to many meetings trying to come to a decision, because no one could be in charge, except the Monday morning quarterbacks. Remember to always drain the swamp first or try adding a little chlorine to the gene pool also helps.
Dave