Comments on: The great nappy scam

By: paula

paula — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:15:08 +0000

Just peeking back to add another link. All this talk of soakers has me wanting to try and make Katrina's free soaker pattern. I've had this old cardigan put aside for weeks, just waiting for me to find the courage.

By: Kira

Kira — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:27:32 +0000

hanks for clarifying I’m from Sydney and I’ve been very disappointed by the responses people have when they find out I’m using cloth nappies (not to mention the very few number of people who actually use them). My mothers group wouldn’t even consider using any type of cloth, even after I’ve proven it isn’t that hard. For a lot of mums, in this area anyway, convenience wins over the environment any day and that’s a really sad state of affairs.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:56:45 +0000

Hi Kira!

It’s terrific to hear there’s a second-hand market for reusable in Australia. I figured there had to be; I was commenting more on the attitude of most of the Mums in my local Mums group, where it seems to be about the look more than the impact (that might be the part of Melbourne I live in though!)

Also, I never meant to imply that disposables are better than reusables. Thanks for pointing that out. At least 6000 nappies in landfill, all that woodpulp and polyethylene production, destruction of forests? No way it adds up to 24 reusables, no matter how much polyester is in them.

By: Kira

Kira — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:49:03 +0000

I’ve used both flat nappies, prefolds (organic cotton) and reusable nappies on my two kids. I much prefer to use natural fibres with a wool cover (or no cover in summer) as they are much more breathable than PUL anyway and my kids are far less prone to nappy rash. Whilst I understand what you are saying regarding the environmental issues surrounding the use of polyester in nappies, this is only one aspect of the environmental impact for a single part of a nappy (the waterproof layer and or inner liner). There are other environmental issues to consider regarding all types of nappy use (disposable and reusable incl flats), most of which have been looked at in reasonable detail for cloth (both modern and traditional cloth) but not for disposables. It is still more beneficial to use reusables than disposables based on the limited environmental information that is available. Also, there is most definately a second-hand market for reusables in Australia. They can be sold through trading rooms on most nappy/parents websites (through the forums) and also here http://www.buyforbaby.com.au I’d love to see more people move away from the “throw-away” attitudes that society has developed and take up cloth nappying (in any form) but I don’t think it is going to happen any to a large degree any time soon.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:13:50 +0000

I think this is the benefit of economies of scale… I live in a city with 5 million people… and yet this year, the last of the nappy services closed its doors, so no more commercial washing. Sigh. The service option is one I originally planned to use, but the organisation closed literally a month before I gave birth.

By: Beth W.

Beth W. — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:58:53 +0000

We’re using cloth diapers from a service — so we “rent” the diapers rather than purchasing them. On top of that, they handle the washing — and they wash in bulk with graywater, so they can get a lot more clean with a lot less waste. Yes, there’s pollution in the pickup and dropoff, but it’s a semi-environmentally-friendly option we can mostly live with.

By: sabine

sabine — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:27:20 +0000

Don’t know about Oz, but in the states there is a pretty good market for second hand diapers. People are always selling them online in the cloth diapering community on livejournal. Also diaperswappers.com has a very large following.

I bought all my cloth diapers 2nd hand, half from Craigslist and half from livejournal users.

I originally thought I would prefer one-sized all in ones with PUL. When I started using cloth diapers my daughter was too small for one-sized diapers so we started with prefolds. They are really cheap and I actually prefer them to the fitted diapers with snaps or touch tape.

There also seems to be a lot of hype about one-sized diapers that will require covers, but have patterned fabric as the outer layer. These diapers run $20-$40 USD each and do not fit “birth to potty learning” as is often stated. And I do not understand why any one would buy a pretty diaper that they were planning on covering.

By: paula

paula — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:27:02 +0000

I remember back when I was pregnant initially, thinking that advocating cloth-nappying was obviously anti-feminist “How dare anyone suggest I should be scraping poo,” I thought. I had a bunch of self-justifying references, like the UK study which says that cloth & disposables have the same environmental impact, and a site saying that disposables cure nappy rash, and it was obviously all just way too hard!

But now I see all that as being a symptom of not having looked into it. That UK study was funded in part by a company that makes disposable nappies and uses a commercial nappy wash service as their comparison point for cloth. For every site saying to change to disposables to cure nappy rash, there’s another site saying to change to cloth for the same reason – it’s how you use them, not the type of nappy that counts. And there is a whole bunch of resources online with information on nappy folding. I quite like this little U-Tube nappy fold demo.

These days I’m using a modern cloth nappy system for my second child. With more information and peer support I might have tried foldies, or started with cloth sooner.