10 March 2007

Reusable Nappy Week

| emd
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Reusable Nappy Weekâ„¢ is an Australian event designed to increase awareness of reusable nappy options for our modern times. This is the second annual week long celebration of Reusable Nappies, held in conjunction with International Real Nappy Week.

Displays will be set up in cities all over Australia, with Gatherings planned throughout the week
to give you the chance to see a large selection of modern variations on reusable nappy options, and talk to parents who use cloth.

Click here for Canberra events and contacts: http://www.modernclothnappies.org/events.htm
Nappy Display and Q&A – Canberra Hospital, Main Foyer, Yamba Drive, Garran. Wed Mar 21st 11am til 3pm

Nappy Display and Info session – Campbell Cottage Child Care Centre, 8 Savige St, Campbell. Thur Mar 22nd 5:30pm til 6:30pm

Nappy Display and Sewing Demo – The Lifestyle Centre, Hyperdome House and Home, Athllon Drive, Tuggeranong. Sat Mar 24th 10am til 2pm. Outside The Patchwork Shop and next to The Good Guys. Will include the construction/sewing of a hemp nappy.

And for those concerned about washing nappies during a drought, consider this: a plastic nappy uses lots of water in being made, gets thrown away after one use, and spends 1000 years in landfill before it breaks down. A cloth nappy can be made from environmentally sustainable crops like hemp or bamboo or even soy, can be used many of thousands of times, breaks down in compost (if made from natural materials), and can be washed without the need to soak in a bucket overnight.

They even look cuter than disposables! I have nappies in every colour and print imaginable, with butterfly wings on the back, embroidered, denim, tie-dyed, knitted… And some of them are more absorbent than the most expensive disposable nappy brand.

Don’t believe me? Come to an information session and find out for yourself!

Update: Another demo has been added to the list – at Theo Notaras Multicultural Centre, Level 2, North Building (above Canberra Museum and Gallery) on Friday 23 March 11am til 2pm.

Also, there will be a lucky door prize at the Theo Notaras Multicultural Centre display and Q&A, and at the Campbell Cottage childcare centre event.

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babies don’t produce colonies of small square jelly chrystals when they are in cloth nappies…

Ingeegoodbee12:59 pm 10 Mar 07

“…have you noticed that sometimes little gel crystals escape from the disposable nappy and are stuck to baby’s bottom? I don’t want anything that chemical in nature that close to my kids genitals.”

emd – those crystals don’t escape from the nappy, they’re actually components of the urine from your baby that haven’t bonded to the long-chain polymer in the nappy. The polymers are only traping water molecules, so the other components like urea, amonia etc. get left behind

Woody Mann-Caruso11:00 am 10 Mar 07

WMD – 208kg for 6 disposables ?

Probably nobody reading this, but: the figures are for a year (ie, you use 6 nappies a day for 365 days to get 208kg of non-renewable raw materials). Sorry, I didn’t make that very clear.

‘I wish someone would do a definitive study.’

Wish no longer! (Well, just for a little bit longer.) A woman named Kate O’Brien, at UQ, is currently completing a study on the cloth vs disposable issue. I’m not sure whether she’s including the new breed of cloth nappies in the study (ie made of bamboo and hemp, so very low water in manufacture), but it should at least be a contribution to the debate … a debate marked by a conspicuous lack of current data …

208kg does seem a lot fo 6 disposables – but it isn’t just the six mappies – it includes the wholoe manufacturing process and any byproducts/waste.

Nappy services you don’t hear much about these days, cos most people are not using the old white flat nappies, but the new ones made of modern fabrics and shaped more like disposables, with velcro to do them up.

I honestly cna’t believe that a couple of extra loads of washing (for cloth nappies) can be worse than a huge manufacturing process, chemicals, huge transportation distances, and then the landfill problem.

I wish someone would do a definitive study.

Ingeegoodbee, have you noticed that sometimes little gel crystals escape from the disposable nappy and are stuck to baby’s bottom? I don’t want anything that chemical in nature that close to my kids genitals.

Cloth nappies are so much better than they were 30 years ago. But you won’t hear about it in the media, because there’s so much more money to be made advertising disposables.

Ingeegoodbee5:33 pm 07 Mar 07

Ooops – that makes me look too excited about nappies dosn’t it…

Ingeegoodbee5:31 pm 07 Mar 07

Sammy I would have pointed you to the Choice guide quoted by GnT below your post. I understand that the EPA study quoted brought together a number of previous studies of Australian and overseas experience.

Nappy service nappies have a particularly high impact because of the mandated number of times they must be washed between clients and the need for washing in 100 degree celcius water. Not a problem where water isn’t at a premium.

I like the space age technology of disposables to – seriously, the technology used in them was developed for the moon missions – the stuffing consists of long-chain polymers that attract and chemically bond with the water components in the wee – their not absorbing like a sponge, but rather traping individual water molecules that adhere to specific points in the polymer sequence.

Green Miles Thumper, it’s the new excuse for buying your expensive bling.

WMD – 208kg for 6 disposables ?

Considering they’re pretty featherweight it’s a little extreme a figure.

Not that I’m into disposables, but those stats speak for themselves.

hey randomgit – can your wife make an adult sized one?

im thinking of becoming an astronaut.

Woody Mann-Caruso2:28 pm 07 Mar 07

studies seem to indicate that there’s no clear environmental advantage between the two

Some studies show a clear difference between the two. For example, a study by Landbank Consultancy (whoever they are) in 1991 supposedly came up with these figures:

Cloth nappies (9 per day) uses 2352MJ of enery, 12.4m3 of waste water, 25kg of non-renewable raw materials, 4kg of renewable raw materials, 4kg of domestic solid waste, and needed 1,150 to 6,800ha of land for raw materials.

6 disposable nappies, on the other hand, used 8900MJ, 28m3, 208kg, 361kg, 240kg and 29,500-32,200ha, making them 3.5, 2.3, 8.3, 90, 60 and 4-30 times as resource hungry.

Not saying there aren’t other studies saying there isn’t a difference – just saying that there are studies saying there is a difference. I wish there was some definitive data either way – any pointers?

We use disposables, if it matters.

Disposeable FTW, quick, easy, good for the spud. Two thumbs up.

prevention is better than the cure. don’t have babies, pity I don’t listen to my own advice.

One million nappies a day go into Australian landfill- how sustainable is that?
I used cloth for 2 babies- with disposables for emergencies.
The soaking, washing isn’t that bad- I mean it’s not as if we have to boil ’em up, mangle them out- I mean most of us have access to water saving automatic washing machines??

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt11:16 am 07 Mar 07

Really? I piss on my lemon tree in my back yard!

I haven’t yet taken a dump on the front rose garden though. My neighbourhood is way to highbrow for that!

VY~V8 – don’t get into the realm of putting faeces onto your garden…

Very nasty consequences…

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt10:30 am 07 Mar 07

Maybe I need to combat global warming by not using nappies at all, and just inserting pipes into my kid’s orifices to suck out any nasties, and compress them into garden fertiliser pellets.

My wife makes the lining of her clothies from polar fleece. Draws the moisture right out and it very comfortable and soft to boot.

I’ll buy you a mintie to get you over it bonfire.

“They even look cuter than disposables!”
who cares, its only there cause the baby is too young wipe its own ass and you replace them regularly enough that ultimately, does it really matter that much how cute they look. form and function over fashion is my motto when it came to my babies arses.

this is one of the most ridiculous ‘news’ items ive ever seen on riotact.

nappies ?

please.

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt9:35 am 07 Mar 07

I don’t think using the water is much of an issue, as it ends up back in the environment anyway.

We don’t actually use that many nappies – I would think less than half a dozen per day.

Cloth nappies how have layers of different fabrics (like camping clothes) and they can also draw the liquid away from the baby.

It uses as much water to make one disposable nappie as it does to wash a reusable one.

And you dont end up with half a green bin full of dirty nappies every week.

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt9:04 am 07 Mar 07

I guess I could save our dirty nappies if you guys want to reuse them, though.

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt9:04 am 07 Mar 07

I use disposables mostly because they construction of the nappies means that moisture is drawn away from the bub’s skin, so they are a lot less susceptible to nappy rash. Happy baby = happy wife = happy me.

I’m sure that the other sort ‘look great’, but my son’s health and comfort is more important.

Having dug through Canberra’s waste products for a couple of weeks, I can confirm that at least 50% of what I was digging through was undecomposed nappies.

We’re about to start drinking our cloth nappy waste, so the environmental impact of that choice of nappy product could be regarded as close to 0%

Scaremongers such as the producers of disposable nappies will probably tell you otherwise, but ask yourself this question in logic: Where else will the toilet/laundry water go when it hits the water purification plant ?

(btw filter product becomes dirtfill or compost eventually – offsetting the {solid} component of the waste)

We use cloth, but have a packet of disposables for emergencies – a couple in the car for example. Mini Maelinar changed nappy sizes before we got through the first bundle.

We use cloth as a cost cutting measure. We save a lot on nappies and we don’t notice the drudgery of pre cleaning washing and hanging anymore.

They are very easy to make. If anyone wants a pattern I can pass on the wifes own one.

NSW EPA points out: “The disposal of baby wastes by whatever means is damaging to the environment. Both cloth and disposable nappy systems impact adversely on the environment, but the available studies seem to indicate that there’s no clear environmental advantage between the two.”

Got this quote from “The Choice Guide to Baby Products” – a very useful book to buy if you’ve got a little one on the way.

Every serious analysis of cost-benefit and environmental impact over the years

Could you point me toward these studies? The patter of tiny feet will probably make an appearance in my house sometime in the future, so i’m very interested in this topic.

Ingeegoodbee7:33 am 07 Mar 07

Gotta love the unqualified promotion of sustainability of re-usable v disposable that relies on there being some inherrant evil in having a disposable nappy occupying space in landfill. Every serious analysis of cost-benefit and environmental impact over the years has found little measurable diference between the two.

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