Filling landfills or wasting water....

[robin3]

For DS2 a friend has gone 80% of way to persuading me to use the washable nappies but DP still thinks that we should concentrate on saving water this summer and this would surely create another couple of loads a week if not more.

What d'ya reckon?

Most council's now provide green bins for garden and kitchen waste - which I believe is then composted. Could you put bio-degradeable nappies in there?

Our council used to collect kitchen and compostable waste - would have been perfect - but stopped for some reason a few years ago. Something to do with pathogens, I think. Now they will only collect garden waste - weeds, hedge cuttings, etc. B*gger. We compost all our kitchen waste ourselves now, but until/unless I set up that wormery, ds's biodegradable disposables have nowhere "green" to go.

Ds's been showing toilet training signs for a few months now. Not begun yet because of recent house move, but maybe now we'll get started ...

We have our food waste collected for composting....really don't think food waste includes nappies though, does it?!? That would be brilliant though...

if you wash washable nappies with the normal wash (or if you have enough to do a full load of nappies) then you don't waste water with washables. how much water do you think it takes to make disposables?

I dry pail and they don't smell at all. I tend to wash all the nappies, liners, boosters and wraps every otherday as DS is a super soaker. He suffers less from nappy rash since swapping to cloth. My machine has an economy wash setting which I use for everything as it uses about half the water it would use on a normal setting. Use a small amount of distilled vinegar instead of softener to reduce powder build up in the nappies so that they are lovely and soft. They all go through at 60 degrees. If any are particularly badly stained I add a teaspoon of PHP biodegradable nappy soak to the washing powder. Nothing beats the sight of a line full of clean nappies being bleached by the sun.

"Nothing beats the sight of a line full of clean nappies being bleached by the sun"

Really?

Going back to the issue of water usage, water is used in the production of disposables. Also:
-disposables really can make boys' bits too hot which can affect fertility later on
-horrid gel (crystally bits) used in disposables is bad for skin, has caused bleeding in some cases and is potentially lethal if swallowed due to its liquid-absorbing properties (and where do babies put everything?)
-I think it takes 4 trees to keep a child in disposables from birth to potty (even with replacement tree-planting, ancient diverse woodland is replaced with monoculture plantations which is not so good for wildlife)
-oh, and the disposables used each year in the UK would fill Trafalgar Square to the top of Nelson's column more than 10 times
Rant over!

And sunlight does help bleach nappies - moonlight too apparently.

Where does the water go that (allegedly) is used in nappy manufacture? It obviously doesn't end up in the finished product.

Funnily enough, in a bout of insomnia the other night, I ended up watching BBC2's Learning Zone overnight, when they were doing revision programmes for GCSE geography. Have a Google on 'cotton' and 'aral sea'.

The crystals in the disposables made my little boys bottom bleed which is why we changed to reusables.

And yes Sunlight will "bleach" colour out of garments and make whites appear whiter.

A mite sarcastic, scienceteacher, if you don't mind me saying so. Allegedly? You try turning umpteen trees into paper pulp without using any water! Presumably the water goes back into the system, like the water that is used for washing real nappies. I was merely pointing out that disposables use water too as this was cited as an issue with real naps.
I know cotton production is very chemical-intensive at the moment and this is a big issue, but organic cotton nappies are readily available, as are nappies made from hemp and even bamboo. Using secondhand nappies also makes washables even more viable.

scienceteacher - you can't really be a science teacher if you need to ask that. disposables contain wood pulp, which requires a lot of water to make.

Some cotton is grown in a very non-environmentally friendly way, but then so is some wood, and pretty much all petrochemicals (which disposables also contain) are less than good for the environment.

'K, so maybe I'm not really a science teacher, but my question was honest.

Are you saying that the water attributed to disposable nappies is used in the growing of the trees (which are pretty good for the environment, absorbing all that carbon dioxide that is responsible for glabal warming), in places like Canada and Scandinavia, where the water falls from the sky in reasonable abundance. Surely if the trees did not drink that water, it would end up in rivers, and then the sea?

What am I missing?

90 percent of mine are second hand and if they are stil in good condition when DS grows out of them my sister will use them for her little one who is due in November. This helps reduce costs even further as well. Once you have shelled out for your nappies the cost of washing them is no where near the cost of buying packs of disposables. I have 5 shapped nappies for nighttime use as they don't confuse DH too much whilst I am at work and we use terry squares or prefolds durring the day as they are a cheap effective nappy to use. Wraps are more expensive than the old fashioned rubbers but don't leave elastic lines round cuffs and waist. Wool or fleece wraps are excellent too and wools are more environmentaly friendly than the plu backed ones.

Scienceteacher - it is not the wood used to grow the trees that is a problem, it is the water and chemicals used in the pulping process to change the wood into a paper like substance which is used to make the disposable nappies

azroc, moonlight is sunlight, only reflected :o

like mummyhill says. It's not the growing of the trees but the manufacture of wood pulp.

azroc - sorry, wasn't ignoring you. must have left the thread open for longer than I thought before posting.

"It's not the growing of the trees but the manufacture of wood pulp" that is the problem

So how is water used in the pulping process? It's not like paper or pulp contains a lot of water. So where does the water go?

Wood pulping process
\link{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_pulp\wood pulp} see environmental impact.
Proctor&Gamble
\link{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procter_%26_Gamble#Environmental\proctor&Gamble}

SoupDragon - good point. I hadn't thought about that. I recently read a book where a family laid their tablecloth outside for the night at full moon to bleach it, and I think the magic and romanticism of the image superceded the logic. That said, why did they put it out in moonlight if sunlight is just the same?
SenoraPostrophe - no problem - great minds think alike

My grandmother (99 now) told me to put dd's muslins out on the bushes in the garden to dry in the sun. Got rid of virtually all staining - brilliant. According to her, thats how the French used to bleach their linen...

I also combine nappies with other washing. Don't bother soaking them and every 2-3 days put them in first on a highish (60 is OK) temp on half load setting, give them 20 mins, drain water and then put in the rest of my washing on 50 or 40 then line dry and you hardly use any extra energy or water.

Oh, this thread has got me feeling guilty. We used washables for DD (even in Australia where there is a DROUGHT) but am not using them for DS...yet, although I'm totally convinced they are better for the environment (and my pocket!)

We just have SO much washing and no dryer. Is anyone else in this situation? Its fine when its sunny but when it rains for a few days we have washing all over our not-so-big house. I'm worried we would just end up using disposable anyway as the washables would never be dry!

What about nappy laundry service? Lots of local authorities (in my case a local baby shop set up a nappy laundry service) offer this. That way loads of nappies get washed all at once, possibly reducing the amount of washing. Our service provides everything you need including bins for dry pailing, they pick up dirties in bag provided and leave a lovely pile of clean cotton nappies. I have to say I also use a disposable at night. I like moltex which are more eco friendly and are unbleached.