Cloth nappies, now at your local supermarket
Home » Blog » Hazel Murray » Cloth nappies, now at your local supermarketCloth nappies are a popular choice in New Zealand, sold by a number of specialist stores and online options, and now finding an alternative to disposables has become even easier.
Photo via hacky @ Flickr
Disposable nappies have covered billions of bottoms since the 1950s, when sales of plastic disposables began to overtake their cloth counterparts. As we well know, that convenience has a cost: disposable nappies account for around half the rubbish in households with a baby.
Increasing environmental awareness and improved nappy designs have seen many families return to cloth—and with cloth nappies about to be made available in supermarkets, they'll soon be even more mainstream.
Up until now cloth nappies have only been available from specialised stores or online, but from this week they will be stocked in supermarkets. Real Nappies, an Auckland company, will be stocked in Foodtown, Woolworths and Countdown supermarkets to make it even easier for Kiwi parents to choose an alternative to disposables.
The disposable nappy, developed from a chopped-up shower curtain by New York mother Marion Donovan, has become an easy option for parents all over the world. But with an estimated 10 million entering our landfills every year and with a life-span of 500 years they are an environmental menace.
The growth in “green parenting”, (see 'Eco mamas and papas' by Sarah Heeringa) has made products such as cloth nappies a desirable choice for a number of reasons, and they're not only environmental.
Those parents who have already chosen to avoid disposables will know there are a number of options available. As Aime Richardson found out (Good #9), there are all manner of pockets and pouches that provide different levels of ease and protection. Real Nappies are made up of three layers: a biodegradable liner, cotton nappy and waterproof fabric cover. They come in four different sizes from newborn to toddler.
Liz Mole, the managing director of Real Nappies, says:
“Now that cloth nappies will be available at supermarkets it’s really simple for parents to purchase exactly what they need, with the Real Nappies Essentials Pack and the Real Nappies Top-up Pack … each pack contains cloth nappies, nappy covers and an instructional DVD, and the Essentials Pack contains biodegradable liners as well.”
So what exactly is the deal? And after all that washing and drying, especially during winter, not to mention the inconvenience of carrying around soiled nappies all day, are they really kinder to the environment and are they worth it?
For starters, cloth nappies are made from natural materials and the way in which they are washed and dried can considerably reduce their environmental impact. Parents are able to control this impact by washing full loads, using a biodegradable washing powder and line-drying where possible. Additional benefits to this are that sunlight is a natural bleach as well as an antiseptic.
According to Zero Waste the cost of disposables is almost $3,000 more than cloth, which factors in laundering. But perhaps the clincher, as Aime Richardson mused, is that there is “something infinitely satisfying about seeing rows of multi-coloured pockets, bamboo velour, and prefolds drying on the clothesline”.
Thu March 04, 2010 @ 02:45 PM
www.realnappiesusa.com