Man said disposable nappies should be banned

Mooncups are fab though, having said that!

Good point about periods vs crapping

No calls for men to "do their bit" and give up bog roll

no scraping here either. I use paper liners and just take them out and flush them.

Nappy goes in bin, then in wash every couple of days with other whites.

they dry on the line or on an airer.

I really don't get why this is difficult?

the disposables sit and rot in an outdoor bin for two weeks before the binmen/women collect them. The stench is vile.

No idea, all I know is that disposable nappy companies tell you to flush the poo. I was just speculating about dogs. But yes, I suppose there would be a risk of disease from bringing dog or cat faeces into the house (although where that leaves litter trays I don't know).

But why would human waste be worse in landfill than cat or dog waste?

Is it because of risk of disease? Or what?

No Swallowedafly, no scraping here, I just pick the poo out with a small amount of toilet paper. I do accept though that every dc's poo is different, I'm fortunate in dd pooing very neatly (ha ha!). I don't see it as any different to wiping my own behind!

To answer your question Gorionine, when out and about, you put soiled nappies in a wet bag. I use a zipped one, & it most definitely doesn't smell. As mentioned before, if you flush the poo, they're not really smelly anyway.

Interesting question about dog poo, but I guess it's different as it's not human waste, & there might be a potential risk in bringing it into the house.

Washable cloths even

That thing about not putting poo in the rubbish - does that mean that people are suposed to put dog and cat poo in their loo, not in the rubbish bin?

Because I don't know any dog owners who do that, they all throw it in the bin (that's the ones who bother to pick it up, but that's another thread)

I have to take issue with the point about nappy rash.

There is no evidence whatsoever, that using disposables, reduces nappy rash. The rates of nappy rash are exactly the same now, when nearly everyone uses disposables, as they were 40 years ago when nearly everyone used washables.

My main reason for using disposables was money and the fact that my babies wouldn't have whatever chemicals are used in the disposables, next to their bums and genitals for 24 hours a day. Still used disposables when we went out etc. though.

This reminds me of the debate on tampons, where people demand that women use washable sanitary towels as they did in the old days, but no-one says we should all - men and women - get rid of loo roll and wipe our arses with washable clothes.

Why the repeated references to 'scraping shit' swallowedafly? What do you imagine cloth users are doing, removing it with their finger nails?! And as for not having the 'time and space and energy to dispose of human waste in your own home' - what, you mean a toilet? And as I said previously, and other posters too, you're supposed to flush the poo with disposables anyway!

I'm not suggesting everyone should use cloth, each to their own, and there have been some very good points as to situations where this isn't practical. But please don't criticise out choice you clearly know nothing about. You don't soak cloth nappies these days you know!

And as for using cloth then driving a massive car to work, dh walks to work & I use public transport. And we rarely fly abroad, so no great big carbon emissions there!

what about drying them though?

You see I don't find them that hard to use.
They don't fester in a stinky bucket, it hardly ever smells
They don't leak, that may be due to good wraps
Yes they are a bit bulky but you just buy the next size clothes
1 extra load every 2 days is not that much in a family of six. I just add them to dish cloths and tea towels
I change dd every 2-3 hours as she poos a lot. I see that as nappies saved as i can re use these, dispos which are on for 5 mins is 12p wasted
the 1st size has lasted dd a year so £100 has done me well.

They have improved from terry squares though so whilst dispos were a great labour saving invention the newer styles of reusables are better then the early dispos

SaF - municiple incinerators are indeed the way to go. Recycling the energy in a disposable nappy is far better than leaving it slowly to decompose in landfill emitting methane which is a terrible greenhouse gas - far worse than CO2.

If we incinerated all disposable nappies (and our other burnable household waste) then collected the waste heat to make electricity or to heat municiple water for say hospitals or local authority swimming pools or council offices it would be a far far more environmentally friendly solution than constantly washing and drying reusable nappies.

I really like the nature babycare nappies - not yet 100% biodegradable - but they are working on it, disposables aren't as evil as they used to be.

Your friend is BU and some excellent posts on here to say just why!

Thankyou Morebeta because I do not drive so your comment made me feel less guilty about using disposable when the dcs were little

Seriously, I am very much into recycling but I never got my head round using reusable nappies. How do you do when you have to be out of your house a lot with little ones, do you carry the soiled nappies arround with you all day? (serious question BTW)

I live in a sub-tropical climate and in winter, would have to put all nappies through the dryer - the dryer would be on every day.

No chance of hanging them out to dry, as it rains at least once a day. And even though I hang all our clothes out to dry inside (which I freaking hate!!!), they never get dry, not even after 3 skanky days hanging on the bloody rack.

Everything but everything ends up in the drier to actually get dry, so add a load of nappies onto that lot, and not only am I not being very environmentally friendly, but our eleccy bill will be through the roof. And it's already a good three times what we used to pay in the UK.

I'll stick with disposable for the time being - not that I'm exactly happy about that, but it's the lesser of two evils, right now.