Yeah, I assumed the same, just throwing in a lil' parenting humor :) My wife 'n I looked at cloth diapers as opposed to single use diapers, and any potential cost savings were completely offset for us by the additional time/work investment needed by choosing a cloth diaper solution as well as the smell factor...there's ALWAYS a smell factor, regardless of how 'odorless' you're led to believe their bins are.

We used a service for our first kid, and yeah, keeping a pail of soiled diapers around for a week isn't ideal. For our second kid, we just purchased our own diapers and did the laundry every two days.

Cloth diaper services give you new diapers for each kid, then keep using them. So they are used in some sense, but they are new for each kid.

When the kid outgrows the diapers they are tossed/recycled, but not given to another kid.

Old diapers make great rags. A lot of my cleaning chores at my parent's house involved my old diapers. :-/

That's not how our diaper service works, as far as I can tell. They seem pooled to me.

We use Do Good Diapers in Minneapolis, and their service is fabulous.