"In 2005, an Environment Agency report which came out claiming that there is no overall environmental difference between cloth nappies and disposables. This quote has been much used by the disposables industry and the media, although the word overall tends to be omitted.
There are two major points to be made about this report.
Firstly, the sample of disposables users was 2000, whereas the sample of cloth nappy users was only 32. Of those 32, some were not relevant in answering some of the questions. So cloth nappy usage statistics have been extrapolated from no more than 32 and in some cases as few as 2 responses. Hardly statistically valid! So the data extracted must be used with extreme caution.
Secondly, the report did draw one very useful conclusion, which the media and the disposables industry have chosen to ignore, as far as telling consumers is concerned: the overall environmental impacts of the two nappy systems are different - with disposables it is largely waste and landfill; with cloth nappies it is largely energy, water and detergents.
And the main conclusion of the report was that the onus is on the disposables manufacturers to reduce the environmental impact of their product, whereas it is on the users to reduce the environmental impact of cloth nappies. No one is forcing you to boil wash, to tumble dry or to iron. Take those out of the equation, and cloth nappy environmental impact goes right down. And, luckily, the kind of people who typically choose cloth nappies are exactly the kind of people who would be aware of their environmental obligations in this regard.
The environmental costs of using cotton nappies can be substantially minimised by the parent in their decisions on whether to soak, how frequently to wash, whether to tumble dry etc. Parents have very little control over the environmental costs of disposables."
From The Nappy Lady