eco-disposables - which are best ?

[SuzieB]

I am pregenant with my first child (29 weeks)and I want
to use cloth nappies when baby comes along - I think I
have decided to try a mix of tots bots and motherease
which both seem very popular.
But I do want to get some disposables for the first
weeks and for outings etc - having read that they can
take up to 500 years to decompose I have decided to try
eco -disposables and would greatly appreciate any
advice on brands and the pros and cons of them(are
moltex smelly ?).
Thanks in advance for any replys and for all the other info I have greedily gleened from other messages.

Hi Suzie, I found that Bambo Nature ones were best on my ds, although they did leak on occasion...but i found that the moltex leaked more....neither were smelly lol!

do they decompose on their own, or do they needs a compost heap/wormnery? thats always confused me.

well i love our moltex, they dont leak for us (until you get to needing the next size that is....) and they really really work so much better than 'high street' usual nappies. neer found them smelly either! they arent small enough for newborns straight away tho.....
why dont you see if you can get one or two of each brand and test them out? most online places will let you do this i think, if you ask nicely

Does anyone know what the differences between the eco-disposables are, in terms of why/how they are eco-friendly?

I know the Moltex ones don't use bleach, have less gel than other nappies and come in biodegradable packets. And if you have a very large wormery they decompose (in a landfill they're no better than pampers).

What about the others?

(in terms of using them - I found Moltex just as good as Huggies/Pampers)

Heck, are the Moltex mini size (3-6 kg) not small enough for newborns?! I must confess I bought some Pampers as well (when I didn't know how long the order from The Nappy Lady was going to take).

I think that unless you can compost them yourself, the advantage of eco-disposables is in the lower environmental impact of the production processes. Although my council did try and persuade me they would biodegrade faster than ordindary dispies in landfill, I have read elsewhere that this isn't true because the conditions in landfill are not suitable for biodegrading, i.e. not enough light and oxygen.

omg! I never knew that eco disps dont decompose any quicker in a landfill!! they should be clearer about these things!

well its not usually helped by parents using plastic nappy bags.......DUH!
I bought the smallest size moltex from beamingbaby.com, and they werent quite small enough for 7lb baby no....must go check there to see if it was the smallest size moltex do or just that beamingbaby stock........

oh didn't knnow that about the landfills not allowing the eco-disposable to biodegrade.

i used nature eco-disposbales which i brought form either sainsburys or waitrose (have seen them in tescos too)i always made sure that i used the nature nappysacks as well, as these were biodegradable too and when at home would put more than one nappy in the nappy sack.
i thought that as well as being more enviromentally freindly that they were quite nice to look at as well as they had little green leaves all over them!

Dramaqueen, it looks like they are the same ones, Moltex mini - it says "to fit 6.5-11bs/3-5kgs" so I can see how a 7lb baby might be a bit small depending on the baby's build.

Just had look online for a few links on this issue of landfill - Green Choices says "NAPPIES WILL NOT COMPOST IF PLACED IN LANDFILL - conditions in landfill are anaerobic, and hostile to the composting process. Instead some kind of composting facility has to be used" but this shop claims they biodegrade faster than conventional disposables. It seems to be a bit of an uncertain area but it would seem as if they don't biodegrade in landfill. I was hoping to persuade my council to take them as compost rubbish (we have a separate bin for that) but will have to settle for switching to cloth as soon as I can manage it.

Thanks to you all for your help I am wondering now whether to just go for normal disposables for the occasions when not using cloth.
I must say that the large superstores (Tesco etc) are not very good at stocking these bio-degradable nappies anyway and I was shocked to find that places like babies r us and mothercare do not stock any either.
Anyway thanks again for your input so nice to be able to learn from others experience !.

Suzie, I'm still going to go for eco-disposables when not using cloth, partly because they aren't bleached etc. so better for baby's skin, partly because the overall environmental impact is still lower, even if I can't compost them. (We live in a second floor flat, so composting is not really an option). But I'm not going to stress the occasional Pampers or similar, because I feel cloth is the only significant alternative to the landfill problem.

Moltex etc. are very easy to obtain online, although I'm not going to try and get my head round the environmental impact of delivery

I planned on using Moltex occasionally (smell like sugar puffs when wet!)as well as cloth but 15 months on have only used one packet! Once you get into the swing of being a mummy cloth nappies are easy to take out and about, on holiday or wherever! My bro's new baby is a tiddler and Moltex too big but cloth with NB size wrap look OK I think.

We use Tushies (you can get them from green baby) when we absolutely have to use sposies. They are just cotton pulp, no gel at all, and seem much more "cloth-like" on ds's behind (he tends to get nappy rash in a normal sposie).

We use cloth easily for outings, though -- it's only really if you're away from washing facilities for several days that it becomes an issue so have used sposies in hospital and staying in hotel for a week with no washing machine.

Moltex do compose faster BUT because they do, they release more methane...once the landfill is full and covered, and resembles a big black bin liner in the ground, the methane will build up and well...kinda explode thats what my cloth mad guru says anyway. If you do use a worm composting system with your moltex, note that you cant use the compost on veg plots!

We're with you on the Tushies LeahE. Been using them when needed for 2 1/2 years and no problems. They have no gel and we have just started to see if they will compost in our bin. Don't think there is a problem with where you use the compost, especially if you are only putting in ones that have been wee'd in. Don't old gardeners pee in their compost?!

For a while you could get Tushies in some branches of Boots but its back to www.Greenbaby.com now!