Benefits of cloth nappies.
We've covered saving money so next on the list is landfill, or not as the case may be.
Approx 8500 disposable nappies a thrown away each day
and that's just from East Renfrewshire - we did a little arithmetic based on the number of babies in East Ren and calculated that approximately 8500 disposable nappies a day go to landfill from East Renfrewshire alone. That’s an awful lot of nappies from one part of the south side of Glasgow, I wonder what the figure would be for Glasgow city as a whole? Thanks goodness East Renfrewshire offer a nappy incentive scheme.
Reduce, reuse and recycle
Reusable nappies are exactly that, reusable. You wash them and use them again and don’t need to fork out for nappies week in, week out. Exactly how much money you can save will depend on you and your circumstances or if you prefer not to wash you can use a nappy laundry service and have someone else do the washing for you, you won't benefit from the cost savings but neither will you be sending waste to landfill.
What about that study that said cloth nappies made no difference I hear you ask? Well there have been two main studies done, ‘that one’ from 2005 which got all of the headline news and if you want to believe that new mums have time to stand and iron their nappies (yes iron them), go ahead and believe in the rest of the findings that the study came up with.
The second more credible report was published in 2009 and did suggest that there was no carbon emission gains to be gained from cloth nappies. However a full copy of the study is here and I challenge you to read all the way to the end where you might be surprised to find that the authors also noted that the carbon emission from cloth nappies could be drastically reduced by following sensible washing guidelines and when done so, real nappies were indeed more environmentally friendly than disposables ones.
Reusable nappies have less pooey leaks. Yup it is more information than you wanted to know but I’m sure every parent has been there with the squirts that go up to the shoulder blades and down to the knees but with cloth nappies you don’t really get that. Why? Because the pooh sticks to the fabric (simple but yuck) and real nappies whether fitted with covers or pockets tend to have snug fitting back elastic which means you do have to wash the nappies but far less pooey vests.
But enough of the science chit chat, cloth nappies save you money and don’t stink out your wheelie bin (or you nappy bucket for that matter), and once you start using them you might actually find that you like them. Wouldn't it be lovely to view Glasgow from above and see gardens and drying greens a flutter with nappies drying in the wind.
