Man said disposable nappies should be banned

No-one is saying that there is no environmental gain in using reusables.

My DH has done his share of the drudgework in having small children (he is now primary caretaker) and I have no issue with him voicing a preference for reusables on environmental grounds. I bloody would do if he left the house before they woke up and came home after they were in bed.

I don't think there is a good debate to be had on the green issue. The pro disposable 'studies' assume bleached cotton nappies, washed daily at 90C with bucketloads of detergent and softener, tumble dried and ironed and fully replaced every 6 months, the old ones going to landfill rather than being passed on until they aren't even suitable as floor clothes and then chucked on the compost heap.

There should be stricter regs on environmental impact imo, without it just being lip-service by claiming a biodegradability that doesn't exist in an anaerobic landfill. There is an argument that biodegradable nappies are actually worse than regular disposables due to higher water usage during production and higher pollutants due to transportation as they are bulkier. I don't know if there is any truth in it.

The only people who should have a say in what nappies a person uses is the person doing the nappy changes. Its easy for me to use reusables. I had enough capital to buy them when I had my first dc, I have a washing machine and a big garden, no tumble drier but a utility room they can hang in when its wet, plus a bathroom that nobody uses that I keep the stinky ones in until I need to wash them. It would be rather unreasonable for me to insist that working parents with limited drying space and time use my chosen nappies.

Loads more could be done to make them more eco/environmentally friendly. I don't want to be filling up landfill space in the name of women's lib.

I use both sposies and cloth, depending on which is most convenient for me, but always feel a pang of guilt when the disposable nappy goes into the bin.

teitetua

Not true.

"Real nappies can be up to 40% better for the environment than disposables. This was the finding from the 2008 update to the Environment Agency?s Life Cycle Analysis Report on nappies. Unlike disposables, Real Nappies put parents in control of the impact they have on the environment, with the carbon savings directly related to how you choose to wash your Real Nappies.

What is a ?Life Cycle Analysis??

A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a study which shows the impact of something across its entire life ? from the production of the raw materials to the disposal of the finished item. The Environment Agency first commissioned a LCA for nappies in 2004 and the report was published in 2005 to much criticism as it made very broad and sometimes incorrect assumptions about Real Nappy use. The updated study was published in 2008 and showed that, used responsibly; Real Nappies can be 40% better for the environment than disposable nappies. Follow our simple guidelines to help cut your carbon footprint

Real Nappies and Waste

Using Real Nappies is an action that can be placed at the very top of the waste hierarchy as it helps you reduce the waste that you are creating in the first place and also means that you are reusing an item again and again. Consequently Real Nappies have next to no impact on landfill sites as opposed to the 3 billion disposable nappies that are thrown away each and every year in the UK, 90% of these are landfilled. A baby in disposables will need about 4,000 nappy changes in total, that?s 4,000 disposable nappies in a landfill site, or 24 Real Nappies hanging on your washing line!"

That's from www.goreal.org.uk

There are plenty of women among the environmentalists, you know. It's not totally fair to single out the men (of course one hopes that the eco-blokes are changing their share of nappies at home).

But there's a good debate to be had about the green issue anyway. When you consider the effect of making the cloth nappies, washing them in hot water and detergent every time they're used and (maybe) drying them in a gas/electric dryer and eventually dumping them, they have a cost too, and it might be up there with the disposables.

I have to say that I've found lots of Guardian reading-La Fromagerie-frequenting-hessian bag using males be terribily keen on using half a lemon to clean the bath. They have all been in partnerships with women.

The men I know who clean their own baths are rather keener on the old Cillit Bang.

As someone who has scraped their fair share of shit off reusables (as well as chucked an equal number of disposables in the landfill) I'd be very susicious of someone who gets to swan off to an office everyday laying down edicts about how much time women should spend buggering about with buckets of soiled cloth nappies.

it would definitely impact more on women if they were banned, and hence would be a feminist issue, until such time as men do as much housework on average as women.

i use reusable nappies and only use disposable when out for a long day or overnight (and they're 80% biodegrable ones).

I do think that disposables should be 100% biodegradable or banned.

It's got nothing to do with women's lib at all; it's just as easy to use reusable nappies and far cheaper.