Two reasons to choose to use cloth nappies are: cost savings and environmental concerns.
Cost Savings
If you want to save over to $3000 on nappying your baby ... bear with my wordy-ness and read on!
When I first started to consider using cloth nappies my son was 9 months old. I had kept fairly careful records of feeds and nappy changes since he was born, thus I was able to make fairly detailed calculations regarding how much disposable nappies had cost me from day one, up until that point in time.
Now something to bear in mind with my calculations is that I used cheap nappies and wipes. I would generally buy the cheapest I could find on special or in bulk (or both!). The average price I paid for a disposable nappy was $0.30 and the average price I paid for wipes was $0.03. Another note is that my boy did not poo that often (like once a week!), thus he used less nappies than many. Thus my calculations represent the BEST case scenario using disposables.
Cost of using CHEAP disposable nappies & wipes from birth up to 9 months = $636.
PLUS
Projected cost of using CHEAP disposable nappies & wipes from 9 months to Toilet Training (2.5 years) = $1,172.
TOTAL cost of nappying my child using CHEAP disposables & wipes from birth to Toilet Training = $1,808.
Now for those who prefer to use “best” disposables and wipes (I’m sure you know which brand I’m referring to!), the costs per item is a lot higher. For example, the average cost of a premium disposable nappy is $0.52 and the average cost of a premium disposable wipe is $0.07. These higher prices combined with the more frequent changes of a baby poos a LOT (particular in the early months) gives us a calculations showing the WORST case scenario using disposables.
TOTAL Cost of using PREMIUM disposable nappies & wipes from birth up to Toilet Training = $4,372.
Now most people will probably fit somewhere in the middle at around the $3090 mark. BUT that is still a good $2000-$2500 per child more than is necessary!
Alternatively, you can spend from $400 (for a basic stash) up to $1000 (for a premium stash) on Modern Cloth Nappies, adding $150 for laundering costs (detergent & water), and you have "nappied" your child from birth until they are toilet trained! That's a saving of up to $3822 per child! If you have (or plan to have) more than one in nappies, the savings increase as the cloth nappies from child #1 can be used on child #2! Nappying child #2 will only cost the laundering costs!
Environmental Concerns
During the 1970s and 80s, disposable nappy usage changed from an occasional-use product to an almost exclusive way of nappying babies. Perhaps as the disposable product became more available, the convenience of throwing it away after use became very desirable for many busy parents. So in no time, disposables were found in almost every baby's household.
Now several generations of babies have been completely nappied in disposables. Considering this is the standard practice in our society, very few people even consider alternatives to disposables. As environmental issues became important to the mainstream public, and the practice of recycling became more common, people began to rethink the use of throw away products like nappies.
Cloth nappying supporters bring up the fact that tons of used disposables have piled up in our landfills. In fact, disposable nappies are thought to make up the third most common item in our landfill, behind paper products and food containers. Since the average disposable takes about 500 years to break down in a landfill, the proportion of nappies there is ever-increasing.
In addition to the sheer numbers of nappies in landfills, there is the concern of what they contain. The discarded human waste contains bacteria and viruses that are excreted through the digestive tract. It is actually illegal to deposit untreated human waste in landfills, because of the possibility that landfill contents could seep into the ground water supply below. It seems though, that this law is not enforceable nor commonly known at this time, as the common practice in disposable nappy usage is to throw out the nappy without first discarding the poo in the toilet.
So in the 1980s, the environmental debate began…
As the pro-cloth crowd pointed to the extreme numbers trees and plastics being used to make disposables, disposable nappy companies brought up the pesticide use in growing cotton. However, this is now negated by the use of unbleached organic cotton as well as hemp and bamboo fabrics which require NO pesticides.
When the disposable nappy companies mentioned that pollution is created in harvesting and transporting cotton to be made into nappies, the pro-cloth crowd pointed out that pollution is created in the manufacturing of disposables and their transport to the stores.
When the disposable companies stated that human waste of babies was dumped into the local water supply through washing, cloth supporters replied that washed baby human waste goes where adult human waste goes: into the sewage system (the best choice for breaking down this waste and reusing our water resource).
What about the water used to wash cloth nappies? The amount of water to wash nappies is about the same as it is for a toilet-trained child or adult flushing the toilet and disposable nappy companies use 10 litres of water in the manufacture of each disposable nappy anyway!
It is true that nappying practices in general do leave their mark on the environment, just as simply living on this planet uses it's resources. It seems sensible to say that the reuse and recycling of products and resources in cloth nappying best preserves our environment.
