Top 10 things that cloth-nappying has taught me about laundry

10. It’s really not that difficult to run the washing machine daily, in order to keep yourself in fresh nappies. I rarely find myself “behind” in the laundry these days.

9. Breastfed babies’ nappies don’t smell nearly as bad as formula-fed or solids-feeding babies. I pop my wet and soiled cloth nappies in a dry bucket — no lid — and empty it into the wash daily. Frankly, the open nappy bucket smells a lot less than the covered bin that my older child’s disposable nappies go into.

8. Ordinary washing detergents, soakers and fabric softeners are full of chemicals which are designed to stay in and coat your fabrics. These chemicals include optical brighteners (to get that whiter-than-white look) and perfumes (for that clean, fresh smell). Those lovely expensive modern cloth nappies come with suggestion to optimise absorbency by using washing detergents which do not coat the fabrics. It’s really, really hard to find such a laundry powder.

7. When you start using a non-coating laundry powder, it’s a bit confronting at first when your clothes come out a slightly different colour, and you realize that what you thought was a soap smell is in fact an unnecessary perfume. But when you realize that your standard washing powder coats clothes and nappies with chemicals, and you are putting over a dozen freshly laundered items against baby’s skin each day, you can find yourself quickly becoming more interested in low-residue laundering than you ever thought possible.

6. Bi-carb soda is very effective at reducing your laundry detergent needs. I use half detergent and half bi-carb for a very effective wash.

5. Sunshine is the best bleacher and anti-bacterial agent known to woman. Line drying your clothes in the sunshine removes stains without resorting to chemical bleach, and removes that slight smell that indoor-dried clothing can acquire. If you have to dry nappies indoors, popping them on a rack in front of a heater means you get to use that heat to both dry your clothes and heat your house.

4. That damp “spoiled laundry” smell that you get when you leave wet washing in the machine too long (shock, horror!) is caused by bacteria. Bacteria needs more than just water to feed on — in fact, it feeds on the residues left by your laundry detergent.

3. Different bacteria need different pH levels. If you are using a standard detergent, you can remove a persistent laundry smell by adding bi-carb soda to the wash to raise the pH, and kill all the resident bacteria. If you routinely use bi-carb and find a smell developing again, do a wash with vinegar-only to lower the pH and kill off your crop of high-pH bacteria. But be warned that vinegar damages elastic. I only put very hardy items in a vinegar wash, and rely on sunlight to remove the bacteria from elasticized items. The other favorite bacteria killer is heat – a wash at 60 degrees Celsius will get many strains.

2. When choosing a cloth nappy system, please, please make “drying time” a key criterion. Those delightfully soft and absorbent luxury bamboo all-in-ones are not only expensive to buy, but they are even more expensive if you need to buy 4 days’ worth in order to allow the requisite two days drying time! Hemp is almost as absorbent and a lot quicker to dry. And those simple cloth squares dry in no time at all.

and finally…

1. I’ve had to overcome both a deeply ingrained caution about the dangers of using vinegar and bi-carb soda, while simultaneously overcoming a skepticism that such products could ever be effective. My generation is programmed to believe in the “safety and effectiveness of standard laundry products.”

[One final note from your friendly editor: check that the laundry detergent you buy isn't made by one of the big nasties — you can easily find out which brands are owned by which companies and how ethical they are at the Ethical Shopping Guide]

Recently, due a small bout of nappy rash that we just couldn’t get rid of, my partner and I reluctantly switched to disposable nappies (diapers, for our American readers) for a week or two. (We think what really got rid of the rash was the absolutely amazing Covitol cream — it’s 22% cod liver oil and smells like it, but it’s thick and terrific at keeping out the moistness.)

Anyway, because we couldn’t bear the idea of using mass market polluting nappies, we chose Seventh Generation. It’s a US company, so it’s all new material, imported, sigh… but it is chlorine-free [see the company's ethical rating]. Worse, as my fellow blogger Paula has pointed out, the nifty “unbleached look” is actually a result of them adding a brown dye!

Thankfully, we’re back to our beloved cloth nappies this week. I keep encountering well-meaning parents who say they are using cloth nappies, but they’re all using fancy shaped things whereas when I say “cloth nappy”, I mean old-fashioned, no-nonsense squares of actual cloth.

Now I imagine, given the hassle of washing the damned things, that most people who are using reusable nappies are doing so for environmental reasons. After a fortnight of paying for disposables, I’m willing to concede there’s a financial benefit in it too, even though I’m still gobsmacked at the outrageous prices for “reusables” ($25 a nappy!) when a 12-pack of my flannelette squares was $29.95.

I don’t believe the environmental claims work either, though. I am yet to find a reusable nappy system that is actually made of all-natural materials. I think it’s all a big scam to make us feel like we’re doing the right thing for the planet. I think it’s actually all a bit like conspicuous compassion or greenwash. It’s more about looking like you’re doing the right thing than about actually doing the right thing.

Let’s have a closer look.

The financial equation

We’ll assume around 42 nappies a week, and unfortunately, because I don’t have CHOICE magazine’s resources, ignore the small cost of washing the things [read their very good article comparing cloth versus disposable for that argument]. That’s 2184 nappies a year.

Disposables: Made from 60% new wood pulp and a bunch of chemicals (none of which are toxic to the infant, but none of which are biodegradable either). Having never bought the regular type, I checked a popular grocery store site and discovered they’re around $15 for 30. With absolutely no redeeming features, this method will cost you $1,092 a year.

Biosposies: Chlorine-free, some recycled materials, these nappies are still made overseas and imported (and so have fuel miles). More of the nappy is compostable, but that’s still a lot of landfill. They’re more expensive than standard nappies: around $28 for 30 (and that’s the cheaper price; we found that the smaller alternative stores are selling these for around $38!). With a tiny nod to the idea of greening your impact, this method will cost you a minimum of $2038.40 a year (ouch!).

Reusable shaped nappies: These vary wildly. Baby Beehinds appear to be $25 a pop while Bum Genius are around $45 a pop (the cotton is organic). You get discounts for bulk though. From the packs available, it seems the suggestion is you need at least 24 (and from our experience with cloth squares, I’d agree). I’ll go into the enviro impact of these in a moment, but let’s just look at the money right now. Let’s assume the nappies are adjustable sizes so they should last for the whole lifetime of the baby. For a Bum Genius 24-pack, you pay around $720.  The Baby Beehinds “Birth to Potty” pack (24 ‘bamboo’ nappies and covers in various sizes) is $780.

Actual cloth nappies: Again, this depends a little on what you’re after. We looked at organic cotton flats, which we found we could buy a 12-pack for $108, which would make the total cost for nappies $216, plus soakers. Let’s say $28 a wool soaker (probably cheaper if you knit it yourself) and let’s say you need 6. Total for organic is $384. We tried to find bamboo flats (less water intensive to grow) but could only find newborns for $9 each, so we’ll ignore that for now.

We ended up being given 12 flannelette cotton flats, so we actually got ours for free, but when we discovered we needed 24, we bought another pack, for $29.95 at Target. They’re not organic and they are new, so there’s all the environmental impact of growing cotton, but even with 6 wool soakers @ $28 a piece, the total for the whole shebang would be $227.90. (In practice, my darling man is allergic to wool, so we use cotton Eenie covers a friends gave us after her baby outgrew them, so in fact, our total outlay has been $29.95.)

The environmental rip-off

I think what annoys me more than anything about the trendy new shaped reusables is that they tout ‘bamboo’ and ‘organic cotton’ all over the place and hide their nasty chemicals behind acronyms and lack of disclosure. That PUL all the nappy systems have? It stands for poly-urethane laminate. And the poly-urethane laminate has to go over something. That something is usually polyester. Polyester off-gases during its production and for a few years afterwards. And yes, it off-gases volatile organic compounds.

Our very old Eenie covers have PUL nylon, which is better, and off-gases the least of all synthetic materials. If Doug wasn’t allergic to wool, I’d be using it.

I’m yet to find a single shaped nappy system that doesn’t have polyester somewhere in it. And yes, I’ve e-mailed a few of them now, when their advertising made it sound like they were 100% bamboo or organic cotton. For example, have you seen the Bum Genius layer breakdown? Notice how it says “inner design” but fails to mention that layer is polyester?

There must also be a huge second-hand market for these, but if there is, I haven’t heard about it. Everyone I know who has them bought them new. That’s an enormous amount of new material impact again.

So, while I’d love for my darling girl to be in brightly coloured, cleverly shaped and above all trendy-as-can-be nappy pants, she’ll stay in her daggy white cotton for now. The folding really doesn’t take long, especially as her Dad’s a clever clogs and worked out a neat way to roll them up and secure them with a rubber band, ready for use. Now we just have to make sure we diligently apply that barrier cream…

(Oh, and watch this space… “fully compostable” nappies are coming soon, and we might even get some to test and try to compare them with others… somehow we doubt anything will beat plain old cloth squares for environmental impact though. Seriously.)