Earth Babies Blog

When I first started read about cloth nappies I saw the figure 2 tons of waste produced per child from birth to 2 1/2 years in disposable nappies mentioned quite a bit. I was quite shocked at this amount, I think most people just see disposables as the ultimate convenience and do not think very much about the accumulative waste that adds up. I knew that for environmental reasons if nothing else I had to research cloth nappies more, but that this amount of waste was not something I could have on my conscience. It is a huge number considering all the babies in nappies.

When we came to writing the information for the Earth Babies website, the sceptic in me wondered if it was really 2 tons or if this was just some slightly random rather inflated figure for shock value. I wanted to check this myself before quoting it in our reasons to use cloth nappies. The problem was that as a cloth nappy user I had no idea how to check the weight of a used disposable nappy.

I have some great friends on Baby Net a South African parenting forum and when I asked if a couple could weigh a nappy for me at change time, they all thought I was mad but were willing to help. The weights varied but a conservative estimate was about 400g as the nappy is not always totally full when changing it.

calculations:
400gx 6 changes a day = 2400g per day (newborn nappies will obviously not weigh as much but ones tends to change them more often so I think it evens out)
2400g x 7day a week = 16800g per week
16800g x 52 weeks in a year = 873600g per year
873600g x 2 1/2 years of a child being in nappies = 2184000g so therefore about 2.18 tons

Seeing as most kids in disposable nappies actually potty train a lot later than 2 1/2 this figure could actually be significantly higher, especially if you add disposable swim nappies and disposable potty training pull ups.

To read more about reasons to use cloth nappies you can visit our website