AIBU to start a campaign to ban wipes?

[annandale]

Wipes are an environmental disaster, a key component of fatbergs and sold as a flushable essential when they should be treated like morphine - controlled except for specific medical needs. Anyone with me?

Honestly. Some people on this thread obviously have very limited experiences if they think that a parent or care person is going to fart around sticking babies/toddlers/older children with additional needs under a tap, or trying to pin them to an elevated changing unit with one hand while leaning a few metres over to a sink (go go gadget arms?) or carrying around a bag full of stinking flannels when they don't need to.
Um, four children enough experience? I'm guessing you haven't got the experience of actually having tried this if you're assuming it to be so difficult. It's really not.

I'm here because um fed up with reading about animals who are dying horribly because of rubbish flushed down the loo, in this car, my other pet hate are balloons and chinese lanterns, and because I think we use far too many disposables.

In this case

What confuses me is that 'normally' on MN there is abject horror at anyone using flannels/wash cloths etc.

The 'problem' as others have said, is now there's a wipe for wiping everything, even your pets.

25 or so years ago, there were maybe a couple of brands of baby wipes and that was it. Now we use wipes for everything. You only have to walk down the cleaning aisle in Tesco or wherever to seem them stacked high.

Baby wipes are great though, as I mentioned before when I was doing my NNEB (showing my age) back in the early 80's we were trained with those two sectioned pastic containers, water and cotton wool.

I recall doing it when DD was a newborn, what a palaver, poo, water and sodden cotton wool is not the best. I used wipes.

We still buy baby wipes for the bathroom.

And if you don't think one-use waste is a real problem that needs sorting just as much as all the oh-so-important things you spend your life working on, then you are deluded

I'm sitting outside a campaign meeting on an issue that relates to the life and death of real human people, today, so no I'm not deluded when I think its a little more important than fucking baby wipes.

It's not either or, is it?

A campaign meeting on the life of "real human people" doesn't mean you cannot support other campaigns.

No, but it does mean I'm not deluded to suggests it's a less important issue.

If you want to stop parents using less wipes, I suggest the very worst way to go about it is to harangue and goad them in aibu about doing so. It makes one want to wipe eveything in sight and then flush them all, just to spite the petty smuggery of "oh why don't you just do what I did, it's perfectly simple and I'm so much better than you because I did it" type posts.

With all due respect, it's not up to you to decide on the importance of issues for other people.

Then it certainly isn't up to pp to tell me that I deluded if i dont accept this issue is more important is it? You probably should have said that to her.

It's not either or, is it?

Exactly.

And environmental disaster - of which the use-once-then-throw-away culture is a part - does affect real life people, and things will just get worse and worse while we sit here and crow about how convenience is king, and so how we neeeeeed things that most people have managed to do without, and survived.

And while we are at it, stop using plastic drinking straws and cotton buds. Find them on the beach all the time

I used cotton balls and warm water. It's really not that hard. My son reacted badly to baby wipes so we only used them occasionally,

Use the nappy itself to wipe away most of the soiling, then wipe with cotton balls. Baby lotion or oil for an extra clean, if I remember rightly.

Wow some of these comments are shocking.

if he can't walk then he won't be going anywhere.
And if you are rinsing the flannel then how can he bite and kick you?
You can do it, you just don't want to.
Shameful.

Oh yes, let's do 6 or more nappy changes with...cotton wool, warm water and baby lotion.
And go to work at 8am and get home at 7pm.
Yep, we'll all start tomorrow.

I'm just saying that it had to work for us as DS couldn't use wipes.

It was as easy to keep cotton balls in the nappy bag as it is wipes. I used the little bottle of lotion if water wasn't available or if he was extra dirty.
I'm not sure why you sound so cross. Maybe it is easier than you think it is? I'm no martyr, I assure you! I like an easy life. Sadly my children didn't cooperate with that! Milk intolerance, sensitive skin, etc etc.

Cotton wool is no better than a biodegradeable wipe though.

I'd prefer the wipes. You can't change the bum of a massive child with half a dozen fluff balls and a bit of Johnson and Johnson's finest.

Baby wipes aren't just for babies. They're for many many incontinent people.

I'm sure somebody will soon be along to tell me to completely destroy the dignity of my child by making him wear a horrendously inappropriate reusable pant of some sort. It's that sort of thread.

I agree Incy, it is that sort of thread. Personally I think only those who have an older incontinent child have any valid opinion on we deal with that incontinence.

The thing is Spikey I would love the technology behind wipes to move on a bit. I've done my share of writing and petition signing aboutnstuff in the past.

I'm just nitnorepared to make the life of my child anybnore complicated than it already is, especially as school wouldn't use whatever convoluted system is lauded as best in here, and he spends quite a lot of time there.

Idealism is great, but sometimes it just has to take a back seat to realism, and my reality is that wipes, carefully disposed of and never flushed, are the most practical way for my child to maintain his personal dignity in the face of double incontinence with a side order of ASD.

We all need to wake up and stop waste and pollution.

Waste is about making/using more than we need. You and your family need wipes, the vast majority of people using them have alternatives. I've stopped the daily face wipes and wet toilet wipes I used to use. I still use baby wipes for cleaning stains dog sick off the carpet, as I can't seem to get the hang of anything else.

There are some great projects around looking at alternatives to various disposable items we all take for granted. Hopefully, technology will resolve some of the problems sooner rather than later. I'm glad that threads like this raise awareness, even if not everyone is able to make changes.

@BarchesterFlowers thanks signed and shared.

I know this is a thread from last September but I've just saw this today:

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/wet-wipes-to-be-eliminated-in-uk-in-effort-to-save-marine-life/ar-AAwTNw3?ocid=spartanntp

Hopefully it comes in. We all managed before they were invented, it'll take a bit of getting used to but still.

They are great when you’re out and about and for cleaning scuffs off leather upholstery and white paint.

But not until I wiped a sore nose when I had a cold did I
appreciate just how they must feel on a sore little bottom.

You aren’t wrong in your sentiment OP, but the cause has to be directed first at don’t flush.

It's in the news today, it's part of a government plastic reducing initiative/strategy.

I also used cotton wool and warm water, never having had a baby when the midwife in the maternity ward told me that’s how you did it, I followed her advice. DS never ever had a sore bum. She also told me to use olive oil instead of lotion, that stuff’s genius!

Before the tutters roll their eyes at my great age; DS is 10.

You're on this band wagon late, it's a new government idea...