Man said disposable nappies should be banned

[rainbowtoenails]

He was a friend of a friend so I bit my lip but I found it quite patronising for a man to be lecturing women on this. He has dcs but I dont think he's changed that many nappies. Easy, then for him to say disposables should be illegal. I tried reusables but it didnt work out for various reasons. I felt guilty about using disposables but they were very liberating. Im no fan of P&G but I think banning them would be a real step back for womens liberation.

Why does everyone think cloth nappies are so difficult to use? I really don't think you can comment on this unless you've tried them. Mine go in a dry bucket, then I put a wash on every 2 days. What's hard about that? Time-wise, I'm not having to mess about with a nappy sack for every nappy, or deal with a bin full of smelly disposables (my cloth don't smell btw, they're in a lidded bucket). With regard to flushing the poo, did you know that you're actually supposed to flush poo from a disposable as well? Human waste shouldn't go in a bin.

With regard to the environmental impact, as someone else mentioned, it is often overlooked that most cloth nappies are reused for multiple children, & then sold on after use.

As for banning disposables, I think this is silly, everyone has a right to choose, but I do agree that companies should have to make them at least partially biodegradable.

I really don't see that this is a feminist issue at all, plenty of men use & wash cloth nappies, my dh included!

Anything that affects women disproportionately more than men, is a feminist issue.

OP I wonder if your friend is in favour of banning cars as well, because they're bad for the environment?

And I used cloth nappies for both my DCs

"how the fuck can you say its as easy to use reusable nappies as disposable? It is in its arse. Disposable: buy, use, throw away. Reusable: all that washing and drying, its not easy at all."

Well you don't have to go and buy reusables every week so I never have to do an emergency trip to the supermarket cos dd has gone through more nappies than I expected or dh has forgotten he opened the last pack and didn't tell me.

I don't have empty my bin as often.

I'm washing stuff anyway so don't even notice any extra work. Didn't even notice it being much work when we took them to Morocco and hand-washed them.

As for it affecting women more than men, I guess generally speaking it does. Dh has always done at least his fair share of nappy changing. I'd say he does 2-3 per weekday and I do the same and he does most of them at a weekend. So although I'm at home all the time with the kids he actually changes more nappies than me. I know that's not the case for everyone though.

"Washing nappies is less time consuming than ironing which millions of people seem obsessed with and I don't get at all."

Totally with you there! Ironing - what is the point. I spend approximately an hour a year ironing, and use that time saved to wash reusable nappies . Never had any problems with reusable - found them very easy. Biggest problem is finding somewhere to put the nappy bucket - but I am liking SGM's idea!

But I don't agree disposable should be banned. All the SAHDs I know use disposable strangely enough.

I use both on dd3, reusables for day and dispos for night. I actually prefer the reusables but don't quite trust them on a night.

I do however have the dispos incinerated rather then put in the hosuehold waste as ds is disabled and his nappies are taken to the incinerator by the council so I slip dd's in with it.
Why can't councils do this for all babies not just for disabled peoples nappies?

And regarding poo in a landfill you aren't supposed to put poo in the household waste you are meant to flush the poo first. I know I don't know of anyone who does either.

I don't think it is a womens lib issue but it is a parenting issue and environmental issue

It does make me gag when renewablist-recyclist types bang on about disposable nappies and then promptly jump in a massive car to drive to work. They just can't see the irony.

Personally, I think disposables are the biggest labour saving babycare device man has ever invented. No nappy rash and stinking buckets of soaking reusable nappies neither.

I live in a sub-tropical climate and in winter, would have to put all nappies through the dryer - the dryer would be on every day.

No chance of hanging them out to dry, as it rains at least once a day. And even though I hang all our clothes out to dry inside (which I freaking hate!!!), they never get dry, not even after 3 skanky days hanging on the bloody rack.

Everything but everything ends up in the drier to actually get dry, so add a load of nappies onto that lot, and not only am I not being very environmentally friendly, but our eleccy bill will be through the roof. And it's already a good three times what we used to pay in the UK.

I'll stick with disposable for the time being - not that I'm exactly happy about that, but it's the lesser of two evils, right now.

Thankyou Morebeta because I do not drive so your comment made me feel less guilty about using disposable when the dcs were little

Seriously, I am very much into recycling but I never got my head round using reusable nappies. How do you do when you have to be out of your house a lot with little ones, do you carry the soiled nappies arround with you all day? (serious question BTW)

I found using disposables very liberating. It lessened my workload and freed up time. I think lots of women dont realise how chained to the kitchen women were 40 years ago.

Reasons we gave up on disposables:
-leaked on bedsheets at night so generated loads of extra washing and had to buy spare sheets/ mattress protecters
-they were too bulky to fit under cheaper brands of clothes
-having to carry them home when out and about was a pita

• putting the poo down the toilet wasnt easy in our tiny bathroom and couldnt be done if someone else was in the bath/toilet. With runny poos it went all over the main nappy aswell so the lidded bin stank terribly when opened and the bucket had to be cleaned loads too which i did-t like doingin the kitchen sink next to food preparation area.
• they leaked o-to clothes much more so lots more washing there too. Also they needed changing more f4equently so more work every day.
• carrying stinky nappies through house to bucket was icky compared to just wrapping it in a nappy bag.
• our washing machine is only on every 3 days so we did have to do lots of extra loads just for the 4eusables. They are bulky so storing them was a pita ( always tripping up on buck3t)
• dd grew out of them within a few weeks so it didnt feel like good value for money
• we are in a flat so had to tumble dry them which bumped up the electric bill

Your friend is BU and some excellent posts on here to say just why!

I really like the nature babycare nappies - not yet 100% biodegradable - but they are working on it, disposables aren't as evil as they used to be.

SaF - municiple incinerators are indeed the way to go. Recycling the energy in a disposable nappy is far better than leaving it slowly to decompose in landfill emitting methane which is a terrible greenhouse gas - far worse than CO2.

If we incinerated all disposable nappies (and our other burnable household waste) then collected the waste heat to make electricity or to heat municiple water for say hospitals or local authority swimming pools or council offices it would be a far far more environmentally friendly solution than constantly washing and drying reusable nappies.

You see I don't find them that hard to use.
They don't fester in a stinky bucket, it hardly ever smells
They don't leak, that may be due to good wraps
Yes they are a bit bulky but you just buy the next size clothes
1 extra load every 2 days is not that much in a family of six. I just add them to dish cloths and tea towels
I change dd every 2-3 hours as she poos a lot. I see that as nappies saved as i can re use these, dispos which are on for 5 mins is 12p wasted
the 1st size has lasted dd a year so £100 has done me well.

They have improved from terry squares though so whilst dispos were a great labour saving invention the newer styles of reusables are better then the early dispos

what about drying them though?

Why the repeated references to 'scraping shit' swallowedafly? What do you imagine cloth users are doing, removing it with their finger nails?! And as for not having the 'time and space and energy to dispose of human waste in your own home' - what, you mean a toilet? And as I said previously, and other posters too, you're supposed to flush the poo with disposables anyway!

I'm not suggesting everyone should use cloth, each to their own, and there have been some very good points as to situations where this isn't practical. But please don't criticise out choice you clearly know nothing about. You don't soak cloth nappies these days you know!

And as for using cloth then driving a massive car to work, dh walks to work & I use public transport. And we rarely fly abroad, so no great big carbon emissions there!

I have to take issue with the point about nappy rash.

There is no evidence whatsoever, that using disposables, reduces nappy rash. The rates of nappy rash are exactly the same now, when nearly everyone uses disposables, as they were 40 years ago when nearly everyone used washables.

My main reason for using disposables was money and the fact that my babies wouldn't have whatever chemicals are used in the disposables, next to their bums and genitals for 24 hours a day. Still used disposables when we went out etc. though.

This reminds me of the debate on tampons, where people demand that women use washable sanitary towels as they did in the old days, but no-one says we should all - men and women - get rid of loo roll and wipe our arses with washable clothes.

Washable cloths even

That thing about not putting poo in the rubbish - does that mean that people are suposed to put dog and cat poo in their loo, not in the rubbish bin?

Because I don't know any dog owners who do that, they all throw it in the bin (that's the ones who bother to pick it up, but that's another thread)