To make disposables, you require wood pulp, absorbent gel, bleach, and plastic fibres. Creating each of these obviously contributes to global warming. To make a cloth nappy, you require cotton, fleece (a synthetic material), Velcro, and a plastic laminate. Again, the production of each of these contributes to global warming. However, because cloth nappies can be reused, their production carbon footprint is actually less than for disposables. With disposables, most people do not tip the solid waste into the toilet before sealing it up, and most people therefore tie it up inside another fragranced plastic bag before disposing of it. It has been estimated that for each child between 2-3 tons of nappy waste is created when parents use disposables. Thus, going into landfill there is a vast amount of non-biodegradable waste. In addition, there is the untreated human waste. If the land-fill site is not properly sealed, the decomposing human waste creates a toxic substance called 'leachate' that then seeps into groundwater and the soil. With cloth nappies, there is the environmental impact of washing the nappies. Heating water requires energy. Operating the washing machine requires energy. However, since most nappies only need to be washed at 40oC, and do not need to be tumble dried, this cost can be kept to a minimum. Likewise, washing nappies with other laundry also saves on electricity costs (although you will use more water as current top loaders all have weight sensitive drums that fill with the appropriate amount of water for each load). Reports from the UK conclude that the two have the same impact, but in different ways. However, various critiques have been levied against these reports, because the manner of testing was flawed. Testing did not take into account the modern use of cloth nappies (ie no soaking, no boiling, no use of bleach or softeners or soakers, use of front loaders rather than top loaders, use of low temperature washes, etc), nor did they take into account the South African context (no need for tumble drying because of the South African sun and the amount of wind we receive; most of power is generated by hydro-electric dams and not from coal-fired power stations). The reports also do not take into account the massive market in second-hand cloth nappies, which further serves to reduce production costs. Thus, our informal conclusion is that cloth
nappies have a lower environmental impact. Whatever your viewpoint
though, there is no getting around the fact that disposables are
non-biodegradable, and that most users will be putting untreated
human waste into landfill. |
