To wonder why more people don't use reusable nappies?

[GinGeum]

I know this will be controversial and I know there will always be some circumstances when they are not suitable, but since becoming a parent, I've not come across a single other parent using reusable nappies.

Everyone I know has also said they were never mentioned to them at all by antenatal classes/midwife/anyone. In the hospital, none of the staff we encountered had any idea what our baby was wearing.

Surely now we are all thinking about reducing plastic, disposable nappies should be fairly high on the list of things to cut down on? Programmes like the war on plastic on BBC barely mentioned disposable nappies. Even switching to reusable wipes would make a huge difference.

AIBU to wonder why reusable nappies aren't promoted more?

Wouldn't the extra electricity usage for washing machine and dryer cancel out any environmental benefits as well as increasing bills? Also, what if you live in a tiny flat and it's just not practical to do 843272398 washes per day with nowhere to dry stuff? They're not exactly a cheap outlay either.

Not everyone has the space to dry them
Not everybody has the time or the facilities or ability to wash them (I remember my brother having to travel across town to use a washer - they didn't have one in their tiny house and then lugging wet nappies back in the car and struggling in winter to dry them, they ended up buying a lot more as they struggled to wash and dry them - fair play to them that they stuck with it but neither of them were working and time was one thing they did have)
Not everybody can afford the initial outlay (not everywhere has access to libraries and grants to get you started)
Not everybody finds them easy to use
Not all nurseries will use them (harder to keep track of 30 kids individual nappies)

It should be encouraged and facilitated so that it becomes the favoured option and I think it has in some circles started to be like that but convenience must be factored in and sometimes that will win out.

I never thought about reusable nappies tbh, I didnt know anyone who used them so never even considered them a possible option. I used the potty for DD when she turned 6 weeks old which kept the cost of disposable nappies right down for me. She's now 1 and hardly ever in nappies.

LOL, how on earth did my mother cope with shitty nappies in the days before disposables? A nappy liner, plastic pants to hold the leaks in and NO AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES!!!! People are just inherently lazy and as a PP has said, no actually gives a stuff about the environment if it makes their life more difficult. A bit like reuseable sanpro, that's what my grandmother used to use, with no washing machines at all.

Dd uses 4-5 nappies per day, they cost about 6p each, roughly about £2 per week. When we used more, the nappies were cheaper in the little sizes, maybe £3 p.w. then? What’s the cost comparison with reusables like?

Please don't. Flushable only means that the liner goes through the pipe, and it ends up clogging up the sewers or polluting the sea.

Can you explain how I would get the sticky poo off of the nappy then?

...but weren’t most women SAHM then, and if disposables available were very expensive?

@millimollimandi

Hope they weren’t as judgemental as you. Do you know mine or anyone else’s circumstances or personal environmental views?

Scrape off? Poo in the loo?

Or don't use the liner.

There are always options. "Flushable" wipes are an environmental disaster.

A friend used nappies for both her dcs and they have now been passed onto another dc in the family

I think people think cloth napped will be more difficult than they are.

I would never have tried them for my twins 15 years ago except for the fact they had very sensitive skin and couldn’t wear most disposable nappies. Their skin would go completely raw.

I didn’t use flushable liners as my plumbing is very old and wouldn’t cope. Newborn nappies got washed as they were. Once they started solids I tipped the contents in to a toilet.

I wasn’t primarily motivated by environmental concerns though.

I have a literal pile of them but what I can only assume is the heat/friction sets off ds’s eczema support is also minimal.. health vis told me there’s one other mum in our area with them... so I literally don’t know if there’s a solution, the most I’ve been told is a strip wash.. which I’ve done to no avail.

Tried both wraps and flats or the all in ones with boosters, same problems

In Scotland you get a couple of free reusable nappies in the baby box to try and loads of info about them, which I thought was a great way to promote their use- the savings of doing this mentioned in the leaflet should be enough to encourage anyone to try them out, even if they aren't encouraged by the environmental impact!

Hopefully other countries catch up soon with this sort of thing, even if you use a mix of disposable and washable, it'll make a big difference for the world we leave these wee ones

Sorry, I'm just trying to work out how I'd get rid of the poo if it's not flickable. I suppose if I had a disposable liner I would, idk, put it in a bagged bin next to the toilet? I suspect it would stink and be horrible to clean, but suppose it's no different to the nappy bin then!

pandarific

I use toilet roll to get the excess off but someone earlier in the thread had an idea about holding it in the loo and flushing!

Some relatives (bit arrogant snooty about many environmental things, eg., they reused plastic cutlery from one wedding at another wedding) declared that they barely had time to take a shower when their (only) DS was little, never mind wash cloth nappies.

Dunno about you but I can take pretty damn quick showers. I would have been more sympathetic if relatives said they were simply "too overwhelmed" which is fair enough for any new parents.

MN said yrs ago that even with disps you're supposed to scrape the solids off & put in loo, not supposed to bag the whole lot to put in rubbish bin.

So the same problem is technically there whether you use disps or cloth; sticky poo off of nappy could be mostly wiped off with toilet paper.

I am always horrified that those using disposables don't flush the poo down the loo but wrap it up and send it to landfill.
I had fleece liners that the poo came off easily but even if you use disposable liners most of the poo drops off easily.But putting shit in your dustbin..yuck.

2009 (!!) thread on why poo on disposable nappies is supposed to be flushed not put in bin.

MN said yrs ago that even with disps you're supposed to scrape the solids off & put in loo, not supposed to bag the whole lot to put in rubbish bin.

I have literally never ever heard of this, i didn't even know it was a 'thing'. Well very day is a school day I suppose.

I've 3 daughters, the middle one wet the bed until 11yo and the oldest still does, so for years I had 3 children in diapers. I tried reusable diapers but despite my best intentions it was really too much work with these and not a big saving. IMO it could work if you have only one baby, but with 2 or even 3 it's very hard.
In addition to that cloth diapers leaked very often, so much more cleaning in the morning, especially with the oldest that has always been a crazy heavy wetter. The disposable diapers rarely leak, particularly for older children only with disposable adult diapers I'm almost fully sure there will be no leaks and no wet bed in the morning. Moreover reusable ones are very bulky and don't retain the smell. For these reasons even now with only my oldest in diapers at night I keep using disposable.
Having said that, I'd love very much to use an environmentally friendly solution without loosing my sanity.

I only started using reusable with my four baby and really regret not trying them earlier. I have around 16 and so far that’s more than enough so that I don’t have to frantically be washing and drying nappies all the time. I wash them on 40 and they are fine- super clean. I got a brand from
AliExpress, that came well recommended and they don’t leak. There should be more awareness on using them, because they are so much easier to use than I ever imagined.

pandarific

4 ways

1. scrape if off with a wallpaper stripper tool/ old credit card/ old non-sharp knife
2. hold the nappy in the loo and flush, the flush washes the poo off
3. get a sprayer attached to your toilet. We have one of these, cost £15 and half an HR of DHs time. It's been so useful (cleaning the loo, potties, dirty shoes etc)
4. use a liner, bin it.

Breastfed baby poo is water soluble so if you mainly bf you don't actually need to get the poo off until weaning anyway.

As for cost:

15 second hand nappies, liners and wraps was less than £50. I've bought a few extra from Facebook groups and a wet bag but spent less than £100.

3 washes a week at 15p per wash plus detergent (whatever is on off in Asda) = 9.5p per wash =73.5p per week.

So 3years of nappies = £214 total. Vs around £500 in disposable nappies (average 5 nappies a day at 8p per nappy&bag). Cost goes down if you keep them for a second or more kids and you sell them on when you are done.

That's not including reusable wipes, which are brilliant! Sooooo much better than disposable ones.

I always used good quality terry towelling nappies for all mine.
I would soak them in a bucket of water with miltons fluid then wash them in the machine.
I used to love the sight of my pristine white nappies blowing on the washing line.

I would then tip the water/miltons down the loo which cleaned it lovely.

I could have used disposables, but I loved my terries, which ended up being used on 6 kids before being used as dusters.
They also made excellent emergency bibs, wipes, etc.
For cleaning their bums I used a flannel and water.