To think a tax on nappies is unfair?

[colacolaco]

It just seems like yet again, it’s the poorest families who will be penalized and suffer most from this.

And what next - a tax on sanitary pads and tampons? Because guess what, they’re not very environmentally friendly either.

@mayblossominapril

It’s just anothertax in women and the ones who will suffer are babies, there will be a lot more babies sitting in their piss for a long time and a lot more serious nappy rash. There are eco friendly biodegradable disposables available it would be better if they became mainstream in the same way biodegradable wipes did after Hugh’s campaign. I have tried washable nappies but faced with constant leaks and there fore more laundry with limited space to dry it in bad weather I went back to disposables. I can’t afford to buy the current expensive biodegradable nappies but could afford a bit more on nappies In our area all waste is incinerated as well.

The problem with biodegradable nappies and wipes (or anything marked in that way tbh) is that the conditions needed for something to biodegrade are not created in landfill so they just sit there the same as the things that aren't "eco-friendly" it's just greenwashing by companies so they can sell a more expensive product.

@IHateCoronavirus

Maybe the increase in price might encourage potty training. The number of NT untrained children entering school seems to raise every year. I think someone mentioned up thread that the average age is 3.

When my eldest DC were training 10-14 years ago the advice was 2. So I waited for the nearest free week to their second birthday (half-term) and trained them without any bother.

I remember our head calling us in to write a personal care policy for non-SEND children for the first time and we were all .
Now it is becoming the norm.

Well quite.

I read an article in the a while ago that said the age to start potty training rose to 18 months in 1960-1980 due to the labour-saving introduction of disposable nappies.

It rose to 18 months!! Meaning it used to be started earlier than that. Now potty training starts at around 3, which is double what it was 40 years ago.

Either every child is now incapable or doing git any earlier or people can't be bothered to try. But there is no need to delay it until 3 and maybe increase in prices will compel people to do it earlier.

Also reusable nappies used to let the child feel they were wet and now they have no idea due to modern nappies which never feel wet.

I'm neither pro or anti this, despite having nappy-wearing-aged babies. The way I see it, we can't have it all. We need yo choose for ourselves whether it's more important to us to have convenient and affordable products at the expense of the planet, or whether we want to push people towards the inconvenient and eco-friendly option with moves like this. I honestly can't decide which is more important to me. I suppose in the grand scheme of things, everyone is going to need to be inconvenienced in some way if we stand a chance of saving the planet.

@ActonSquirrel I read a lovely book around ten years ago called Can Any Mother Help Me, basically a sort of pre-internet MN.

If I recall correctly, the debate then was whether to potty train before or after a year!

I agree, it’s unhelpful.

I’m a massive advocate of cloth nappies - we’ve used them almost from birth, I think they’re great, and I fully appreciate that disposable nappies are an environmental disaster (every single disposable nappy ever used is still in landfill today!)

But I still think a disposable nappy tax is a terrible idea. I hate almost all forms of taxation which are non-progressive. It’s a stick instead of a carrot, which isn’t usually helpful. It penalises people without giving consideration to the reasons why cloth nappies might be inaccessible. It solves none of the barriers to using cloth nappies (lack of information / high upfront cost / time involved in laundering).

I also don’t think it’s even that effective - most people aren’t going to switch to cloth nappies just because their disposables cost a bit more each time. It’s not a strong disincentive, it’s just a crappy penalty to make people’s lives a bit harder.

I’d like to see proactive measures to promote cloth nappies. Grants for the start up cost would go a long way - many people don’t have hundreds of pounds to spend upfront on a cloth nappy bundle, even though the savings in the long term are much higher than that.

Investment in nappy libraries would help too. There are so many options and the cost of getting it wrong can be prohibitive. Giving people more opportunities to try different types before buying would help with this.

DM used cloth nappies for my younger brother, I remember her buying them from Mothercare along with the rubber pants that went over them. He was out of nappies completely when he was 2, and DM used the old terry squares as floor cloths.
I used disposables for our DC though, but they were potty trained at 2. I'm sure I've read some children are still in nappies when starting at reception?

Maybe govt could look at making the initial outlay of cloth nappies cheaper to encourage more people to use them?

YANBU but I do think we are going to have to move towards reusables, for both nappies and sanitary products. It's just not sustainable to carry on like this.

If you think about the fact that your own nappies from when you weere a baby are still hanging around in landfill, it's kind of eye-opening!

Also your parents', possibly even your grandparents' if they had them.

It's a lot of landfill that is completely avoidable.

There's another thread running at the moment about potty training where a lot of people are saying any children supposedly potty trained under 3 are no doubt having multiple accidents and being dragged to the toilet hourly by their parents - complete disbelief that a child just turned 2 could possibly be trained despite many posters saying their children are. That's a lot of extra nappies if lots of people wait until 3. And even if a child did have an accident a day, what's an extra pair of leggings in your wash basket compared to a dozen disposable nappies being used every 24 hors day in say out?

[quote veryblearyeyed]@ActonSquirrel I read a lovely book around ten years ago called Can Any Mother Help Me, basically a sort of pre-internet MN.

If I recall correctly, the debate then was whether to potty train before or after a year![/quote]
I have pics of myself at barely over 12 months sitting in the potty with a toothbrush.

Obviously I couldn't be potty trained and dry at that age but the point was I think people used to do it to get kids used to using it. Put them on it before bed, before bath or whatever. Then it was no big deal to start using it.

Now it's disposables until 3 before it is attempted in many cases.

Also what are the calls for finance for this. People honestly want government support to pay for nappies for a child one presumably decided to have?

Reusable nappies (and period products, since someone mentioned those) are defibrillator the way forward and should be encouraged far more than they are. Disposable nappies are the default, most patents don't even consider reusable and there are a lot of myths about them, like that it takes 3 days for them to dry.

However there are different steps the government could take to encourage the switch:

• ban advertising of disposables
• subsidise advertising of reusable
• hand out free samples of reusable in the hospital, rather than free disposables and a little plastic pot of sudocrem (that's what we got anyway)
• have midwives and health visitors exourage cloth nappy use
• have courses about how to use them
• subsidy schemes to make them more affordable.

The big difference is that all these things cost money and require effort, whereas sticking on an extra tax makes money and requires little effort. So what do you think the gov would choose, given the chance?

There's another thread running at the moment about potty training where a lot of people are saying any children supposedly potty trained under 3 are no doubt having multiple accidents and being dragged to the toilet hourly by their parents - complete disbelief that a child just turned 2 could possibly be trained despite many posters saying their children are.

I baby sat as a teen in the mid 90s. The little boy was potty trained at less than 2.5 and no he wasn't like that.

Definitely, not defibrillator 🙄

Oh I also agree with PPs suggestion of taxing supermarkets on the amount of plastic packing. I recently noticed asda has reduced the plastic on their chicken products by 50% so it can't be that hard to do.

Mid 90s jeez early 2000s that should have said.

I do think more should be done to promote reusable. We use them and I remember reading lots and there were so many options it can get confusing.

We ended up with an all in one type for daytime that goes on just as easily as disposable and isn’t bulky. We use a two part for nighttime and never had a leak.

There is a lot of ‘old’ nappy mistruths also. They aren’t huge and bulky now, nor do they take forever to dry as a blend of fabrics.
I have never used tumble dryer, outside when dry, inside on rack when raining. You don’t soak them either. Just in machine.

I think the brand tots bots actually now include one free nappy in the baby boxes you get given for free in Scotland. Maybe something similar in England or easier access to go and try them would be beneficial. I think supermarkets now sell some , but otherwise most still online only, so easier access for people.

I really really wanted to do reusable nappies but I had a very traumatic birth, a baby who would never be put down, and who did 10+ vile poos a day until 6 months (undiagnosed cmpa). And we lived in a building site. I was barely functioning and had severe PND. I would not have coped with the nappies.

There are eco friendly biodegradable disposables available it would be better if they became mainstream in the same way biodegradable wipes did
Biodegradable products don't break down in landfill, so this wouldn't make any difference. Plus if they're inside a nappy bag or bin bag, they wouldn't degrade even if the right conditions. They basically have to be composted and even then part of the nappy would remain as they're only 60-80% biodegradable.
www.which.co.uk/news/2021/02/why-biodegradable-nappies-might-not-be-as-eco-friendly-as-you-think/

Potty training doesn't start until about 3 now so that's an extra year a child is in nappies and they are huge nappies at that age.

Wrong.

Some of us start at 2.

In fact due to my DD interest in the toilet the other 2 children around 2 years at my CM started potty training as well. Same happened with one of my friends DD's at nursery.

It is ridiculous to start with nappies and, again, is yet another regressive tax on the less well off.

What about large taxes on holiday flights, larger luxury cars, and boilers above a certain size?

In addition, ultimately, if we have to ration polluting activities, is tax the best way, as opposed to legislation? Is it fair that someone can have 2 houses, 4 large cars and 3 holidays abroad, whereas someone else will have to cut their weekly treat to afford nappy tax?

The way to deal with the environmental challenge is science and incentivisation, not a tax on the least well off, of minimal benefit.

My DC were potty trained by 2/2.5 years in the 1970s. Cloth nappies were the only choice for most of us as disposables were too expensive. I handwashed, or went to the laundrette if I could afford it. Line dried, or on an airer in front of our one coal fire. However, I didn’t go out to work when they were tiny, unlike most parents now. Having said that, I belive all the DGC were out of nappies by 3. I can’t believe so many children are starting school still in nappies!

My sanitary products from those years won’t be in landfill, wrapped in newspaper, they went on our open fire along with any other rubbish that would burn.

I haven’t had children and one of the reasons is because the planet is literally going to shit.

I’m hardly the world’s biggest eco warrior, but I try to be considerate as possible in the things that I do, and change wasteful habits wherever I can. Using reusable nappies for your children instead of sending hundreds of plastic nappies to landfill seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do.

The poster who complained about a £50 outlay - think how much each packet of nappies will cost in the long term!

I was one of those 50s babies who were supposedly potty trained by 9 months old, apparently DB was over 1😯, in reality I think that my DM just plonked me on the pot many times a day to save washing the nappies but nowadays many work. I can't imagine nurseries and childminders doing that or fiddling around with cloth nappies. Nursery costs will go up because of the extra bother.

They should just give manufacturers 3 years to create biodegradable ones and not be allowed to sell non biodegradable ones after that time.
Laundry poverty is really tough. Washing machines are the highest cause of debt through HP. They break, they cost a lot to run etc.
That said my Mum used cloth nappies on us Nd handwashed them and then used a wringer. Can't imagine that today, but maybe that's why we are in this mess.