To not understand common attitudes to disposable personal hygiene products?

[hooochycoo]

I'm confronted by this again and again on MN, and I confess I don't understand why it's OK to justify using disposable nappies, wet wipes, sanitary protection etc? Why is it OK to add so much rubbish to the world on the justification of convenience when there are alternatives that are still easy but generate less or no waste? Use a flannel, use a moon up, put/hold your baby regularly over a toilet/ potty, use modern easy quick drying cloth nappies. Why's it OK to recoil in horror at the hippyness of such things? But it's ok to continue buying disposable rubbish from huge corporations and throw them into landfill? Apart from an argument of "each to their own", aibu to not get it?

Because I prefer convenience.

op

This attitude your talking about, now would this happen to be a Fred about a Fred???

If so on the thread concerned the very first person to even imply some of your choices are weird was me.

Fwiw that was solely referring towards EC and nothing else and feel free to do a quick user name search on me,you may notice I'm a fierce advocate for reusable personal hygiene products I've used the same nappies on all my children spread over the last 20 years with only a few additions of some of the modern ones and I'm often found on threads banging on about how good mooncups are (well my preference being the meluna) and I combine one with reusable pads.

It was not the lack of disposable products you use that made me want to point and laugh at you.

I really don't get this 'hold babies over the toilet and they will go' thing. I thought they didn't have voluntary control over their bladder and bowels till about 18 months - so wouldn't it be completely random if they went then or not?

I thought about reusable nappies but as our washing machine is in the kitchen I didn't like the idea of waste and food prep in the same room. I would like local councils in areas where there they have space, to be investigating composting of nappies. I have seen a research study that showed it is viable but when I looked into the logistics of doing it at home, it was too difficult.

I read descriptions on mooncups on here and bought one - they sounded great. I can't insert the damn thing - what a waste of 20 quid!

I use modern pocket nappies, so the main bit if the nappy would dry overnight on clothes airer. The soaker pad dries on a radiator pretty quickly. Not a big deal honest.

So you have central heating? As someone who has lived without it for several years, I could ask why you think that warming your house in this way is any less selfish? Presumably because you understand that a basic necessity such as warmth for you and your family isn't just a matter of convenience. Presumably you also don't have time to forage for firewood, the money to kit your house out to reclaim ground heat or the inclination to insist that everyone in your family just sucks it up and wears layer upon layer of clothing. Living without central heating can be done, but you are choosing not to do it because, presumably, it doesn't make sense for you for one reason or another.

So surely you can see how every decision everyone else makes follows the same logic? Whether it's because they have different priorities, different pressures on their time, different financial situations or just a different set of values, surely it can't be that hard to see why people make different choices to you without insisting that it is purely due to selfishness or stupidity?

I did reusables with dc1. And made my own reusable wipes. It was all lovely. But I had plenty of space to dry them outside in fine weather and inside in wet weather. I also had a cleaner, so was spared some of the other household drudgery.

Then as dc1 got bigger and more active, the reusables started to leak. I found we were going through several outfits a day, and all that extra washing just seemed to negate any environmental benefit. So we switched to brown German unbleached disposables, which had the look and texture of corrugated cardboard, but which smelt charmingly of bran.

Then dc2 came along. With two under two, all efforts to be environmentally aware disintegrated. Life was, and still is, about getting through each day without killing them or myself.

Give me a year or two, let me get them into school and preschool, and then talk to me again about being environmental. Right now, I'd love to but it just isn't going to happen. Sorry.

I didn't even know you could get reusable wipes or sanitary protection. Will look it up and also mooncups before I decide whether YABU or yanbu!

Meh! Obviously I'm polluting the world one sanitary towel at a time and I'm personally responsible for global warming.

I use a sponge because I have a prolapse and can't use tampons or mooncups. It's fine in the house but there is no doubt that it is a pita to deal with whilst out and about and if I could use tampons then I almost certainly would some of the time. On the plus side my periods are much lighter and my period pains have gone from lasting 3-4 days to just a couple of hours.

I used reusable nappies. I could because I had enough money for the initial outlay, I have a good washing machine and a utility room that I can fit 4 airers in and I have a large, sunny garden. I also have central heating and I have it on. I didn't use childcare so I didn't have to battle with a childcare provider to use reusables either.

I actually think convenience is a valid issue - isn't the very essence something convenient that is makes you life easier? I don't think people should apologise for that, or indeed see why that is so hard to understand OP?

I'd be interested to see statistics too on, for example, a family with two in nappies, a woman using reusable sanpro in terms of water/detergent/electric consumption

I'm wondering if any of these studies comparing reusable with disposable nappies factor in the cost (in money and materials) of fixing mould in a badly ventilated older house because there's constantly washing drying on airers and radiators.

There was extensive research done by the Environment Agency into the environmental impacts of cloth and disposable nappies. Their conclusion was that there was no environmental advantage to using one over the other. They impact the environment in different ways but both are just as damaging.

I'm fine with you thinking I'm lazy for using disposable (though the 'eco' kind) nappies with my youngest, as long as you know that most people would think that actually being a single parent who was dumped by their partner when pregnant and continued successfully doing a PhD and working a 2 hour train journey away from home is probably not really very lazy. Do you also want to tell me I'm a bit thick? Or perhaps you'd like to go and address some of the major social issues which prevent people from doing the things you think they ought to before you open your gob next time, eh?

Isn't the point about nappies more the landfill they generate, the space they take up and the accompanying methane and chlorine, than their carbon footprint in production?

All this talk at carbon footprints wrt nappies is a bit misleading.

Not actually borne out by the data. The Environment Agency's study clearly states that the manufacture of disposable nappies has greater
environmental impact in the UK than their waste management by landfill.

Landfill is of course a factor that goes against disposables, but in terms of their contribution to leachate or gas emissions their contribution is far less troublesome than other stuff that ends up in landfill.

The UK's waste management policy means that landfill is gradually being replaced by incineration, so the main outputs as a result of the nappies end of life processing will be CO2, NOX and particulates, so in that regard the carbon footprint will remain a greater issue than landfill disposal.

Although if you add in the potential health damage for people living in damp conditions, particularly those with asthma etc, then you might be tipping the balance in favour of disposables .

I go with the idea that both disposables and reusables are equally damaging but in different ways, and as a land dweller, I'd rather my environmental impact affected the land rather than the sea.

I use a Mooncup because I prefer it to tampons. However, I have to use a pad alongside it and am not yet brave enough to get reusable cloths.

DS was in reusable nappies until he trained at 2. His nursery were fine about using them. I will admit to the odd week in disposables though, if we were away on holiday.

DD had the most godawful nappy rash and was allergic to any cream with zinc oxide in. I either used disposables or she had a sore weeping bottom....

We make our choices based on what works for us. We are lucky to have those choices.

Incidently we chose reusables for DS purely because our bins were collected fortnightly. I have no tumble drier but managed to keep on top of the nappy washing and drying.

I think you have to have 2 children full time in cloth nappies to be as environmentally friendly as using disposables due to manufacturing the cloth nappies and all the hot washing & detergent needed to clean them (plus cleaning all the things that stuff leaking out of cloth nappies have leaked into, plus the bags needed to carry cloth nappies around)

Am happy to be contradicted on this though

It's possibly been said as we're 10 pages in but "moon cup" is such an ineffably twee name that alone put me off.

Oh well, that's me told then! Apologies, I'll not keep on then. Fair enough everyone. I'll concede defeat.

ok op, good on you for holding to your beliefs.

good thread and lots of funny comments.

Oh cheers the body, that's nice of you! Sleep tight!

well, good on you OP for accepting that perhaps people who do things differently to you aren't just doing what the 'big corporates' tell them too, but have also thought it through, just have made different decisions to you.

I'm sure there's some areas of your life when you haven't made the "absolute best for the environment" choice, but the choice that's best for you, and your family, and your budget, and your time constraints. That doesn't make you a bad person - just a normal person fudging along and trying your best.

I don't believe that elimination communication ie holding baby over the toilet isn't messy. Especially in the early days. I'd rather use nappies than get poo on my hands thanks.

Wow lots of rudeness here, from both sides.

A couple of points, the environmental agency report assumed that people boil washed their nappies and ironed them, when the vast vast majority of people using reusable don't do that.

I also fail to see why a cloth nappy is more "yuck" than a disposable... they're both full of shit that you have to empty down the loo. I found cloth nappies more sturdy and I was less likely to get covered in shit.