In the modern world preserving our environment is one of the most important issues within society. By choosing reusable nappies rather than disposable ones you can lessen your environmental impact in a number of ways. Production All nappies, whether they are disposable or reusable take resources to produce.A typical disposable nappy is made up as follows Plastic – The average child requires over 1100 litres of crude oil to produce the plastic in all their nappies. Wood Pulp – This tends to come from renewable forests. However these forests are monocultured which means that it takes up natural habitats and cuts down on diversity. SAP – Super absorbent polymers, the 'gel' in disposables, are non-recyclable and not biodegradable. Reusable nappies tend to be made from cotton or hemp with minimal plastics used for the fastenings, thus cutting down drastically on resources needed per nappy. The actual production process for resuable nappies also has less of an environmental impact.
Transportation All nappies need to be delivered which creates extra carbon emissions in the transportation. Every family using disposables will require thousands of nappies for each child. In the most basic terms this will mean that about 50 times as many lorries would be required to transport disposables compared to reusable nappies. One of the leading eco-disposable nappies is only produced in the USA and has to be shipped in bulk to Europe which creates a large carbon footprint. Disposal Every year in the UK alone nearly 3,000,000,000 disposable nappies are thrown away, that 8,000,000 per day. 90% of these nappies will end up in landfill. Current figures suggest that disposable nappies make up approximately 4% of all domestic waste and on an individual family level it doubles typical landfill usage.It is estimated that disposable nappies will take 500 years to decompose. The average baby produces 845 kilograms of total waste when you use disposable nappies. Because of their material makeup and the fact they have biological waste they are very difficult to recycle, hence going to landfill sites. Environmental Hazards Human waste products aren’t very pleasant and are full bacteria and viruses. Feces from babies contain over 100 enteric viruses. Reusable nappies are washed and sanitised every time they are used. Disposables on the other hand are often left for up to a week or even longer before being taken by the council. In some areas they are left outside houses in flimsy plastic bags which can then be torn open by animals leaving human waste littering the streets. |
