Composting disposables - which sort & do you need to buy special worms?!

[olivia35]

We usually use washables, but disposables when out (& ds's childminder will have no truck with washables).

Recently we've acquired a compost bin for the garden, which comes with a leaflet sternly telling you what NOT to bung in it, including disposables - but I've seen mention on another thread of composting Nature Boy & Girl nappies?

Can you just chuck them in the composter, or do you need a wormery? & if so, what's the difference? We now have dd so we'd probably be looking at up to a dozen disposables/week (ie. the one ds wears home from CM 4 days a week + ones worn by both kids when out for a longish period).

I have heard of people composting moltex nappies in a wormery, but think you would need a pretty big one to deal with even 12 disposables a week.

Personally I am not sure how the worms (or a normal compoating bin) deals with the gel that is in the nappies, or the plastic.

Tushies and weenie pads are the only disposable products which don't have the gel. Tushies do have plastic but I don't know what sort it is. I have placed weenie pads in my wormery- it does the compost good as it is considered a 'brown' additive (which should balance with the 'green' stuff you add. Also, the presence of urine helps to speed up the process. I still have a quarter of the pack left so have never done large quantities.

Don't know if any of that waffle is of use to you- sorry .

Thank you!

Totally impractical for our bog-standard council issue compost bin then? Bugger. Not much point switching from 'whatever's on offer' to eco-disposables, then, presumably.

Yeah, am pretty sure you can compost Weenees pads.

Hi olivia35. Afraid I don't have direct experience as I'm current pg with my first. I have spent some time considering which nappies are best. I've almost definitely decided to go with disposables, but compostible rather than the hideous in-the-landfill-for-the-next-250-yrs type. I found a couple of sites: little green earthlets and spirit of nature who do the disposables - one of which (I can't remember which) composts in 8 wks in a wormery. If you get in touch, I'm sure they'd let you know how. Even if you dispose of them in your normal waste, they've got to be better for the environment than the mass-available disposables (they're the ones the council mean when they say they won't compost.)

It was probably me who said blithely on the other thread that you can compost them with a wormery because I'd read that!

I think they will compost in a normal compost bin, but would take about a year (someone on here has definitely done it but I can't remember who) so you would probably want to do them separately. The woman who writes the environment column in the Observer magazine was saying the other week that a wormery was the way to go, but I keep meaning to look into it further. Will try to do that and post back later.

Have done a bit more digging around and am beginning to suspect I may be wrong on this and the Nature Boy & Girl ones are actually not compostable. I think some other brands are though \link{http://www.ecobaby.ie/composting/vermicompost01.htm\this} is quite interesting/useful.

We have successfully composted moltex nappies but it did take about 18 months. We have quite a productive compost heap on the go all the time so we just added them to that. You do need to tear them up a bit-mmm nice.
We put our chicken litter and also horse manure from local stables in as an accelorator - the manure had the red worms in.
I mulched my tomatoes and runner beans with it this year and it's lovely stuff. The plastic has decomposed too.

Lots of info on nappies and composing \link{http://www.eenee.com/\here}.

Ok, so that's 'composting'... and you need to click on 'Tips on Using Environmentally Friendly...'

Hey, they even have a comparison of Moltex vs Tushies vs Eenees at various stages of decomposition!

...which has just put me off my lunch rather effectively!

Thanks everyone for info. I just can't get enthusiastic about Weenie pads because of the buying special pants thing - we've already got tons of washables of various types - I'd like something you could just whip off & hurl into the composter! Have visions of coming home from day out with bag 1 containing soggy pads for composting, bag 2 with soggy & pooey pants for washing...don't quite see how that's an advantage over just using washables?

Quite tempted to try Moltex or whatever in the composter - but if I experiment with one, & it takes 18 months, hopefully by then the end of Nappy Valley will be in sight anyway. & if I sling 'em all in & it doesn't work (no chicken manure here sadly - dh has vetoed the Egloo ) I'd end up forking heaps of minging nappies OUT again a few weeks down the line. Ugh!

Thanks again everyone anyway.

Bit late, sorry I've been away.
Moultex will compost IF you have a big enough hot enough heap with plenty of worms in it. My black bin size wormery is not big enough :-(
Nature brand are slightly more eco than pampers etc as they are made with some recycled materials and use corn starch in the absorbant bit rather than just a chemical gel. I think they smell better when wet too, I prefer the popcorn smell to a chemical smell.They also don't have lots of differnt colour inks on them , just a subtle little green leaf print.

ok, I read on the wrigglywrigglers forum that urine kills worms stone dead?

Also, you'd need a huge huge amount of worms to eat the nappies one baby gets through.

If anyone can tell me I'm wrong though, that'd be great!