Another Nappy Lady Baby!

 

And Charlotte Eliza makes four!

I’m a bit remiss on posting this, but many congratulations to Molly and Giles on the safe arrival of Charlotte Eliza on 10 October. Charlotte is Team Dilnot’s second child and was – of course – much anticipated. There are quite a few years between her and her older sister, Olivia, who also seems quite taken with the new arrival.

A quick and relaxed home waterbirth is the perfect way to welcome a new baby, as I know from my own experience. Fabulous. 

One of the beauties of working for The Nappy Lady is that it is the one job on earth where a constant supply of new babies to test the latest products is an advantage. From the moment of her birth, Charlotte became one of our official testers. 

Poor Giles now has three women to keep him in check! Serves him right…

www.thenappylady.co.uk

It’s all Henry VIIIth’s fault!

Well, it seems the celeb culture is nothing new, and Henry VIIIth of all people was out setting childcare fashions way back in the 16th century. Fashions that many of us still adhere to.

This isn’t really about nappies, but is about birthing babies, which is pretty close to the same topic, I feel. Anyway, I for one find it fascinating, which is why I’m telling you about it.

I cringe whenever I see medical dramas on the TV which feature women giving birth lying on their backs and I always want to shout at the screen. This is pretty much the worst way for a baby to come, as it has to fight gravity on the way down the birth canal. Women’s bodies are designed to give birth in an upright position (ever seen an animal lie on its back to give birth? There’s a reason for that…), so either cushioned in water or simply propped up on your knees facing towards the raised end of the bed is a much easier way to do it.

So why on earth do so many women lie on their backs to give birth?

My osteopath told me today that apparently it is all Henry VIIIth’s fault – he wanted to see what was going on, so he told his queen of the time to lie on her back to give birth. And, hey, you don’t disagree with a royal command (especially not with him!), so you do it.

And once the queen does it, it becomes fashionable for others at Court to do so as well. Eventually, it trickles down to the populace in general.

And that is why – until quite recently, at least – western women have tended to lie back and think of England while having a baby. Hopefully, however, the current internet-savvy generation are a bit better informed.

Remember, doing it on your back is no fun at all!!!

www.thenappylady.co.uk

What’s so difficult about cloth nappies anyway?

You want the serious answer?

Nothing.

But, there are complications. Firstly, whilst disposables have coalesced over the years from a variety of different styles to one basic design, cloth nappies have done exactly the opposite. They have gone from a traditional terry square (in the UK) …

Traditional terries with a nappi nippa

to shaped nappies, which may be sized or birth to potty …

Birth to potty shaped nappy

or a pocket nappy, with the waterproof outer built in …

Pocket nappy

it might not even look like a nappy at all …

Tie on with woollen overpants

You get the gist? And I’ve barely scratched at the surface of choice there. I haven’t even mentioned prefolds, the American equivalent of a terry square.

The point is, you know what you are looking at when you look at a disposable. With a cloth nappy, you start off from a complicated choice of style options, before you even work out what you need in the way of constituent parts (I’ll come to that soon in another post).

You have to decide what is right for you (which is where the Nappy Lady’s free advice service comes in). And then you have to know how to use it.

The days of boil washing at the kitchen stove are long gone. We have washing machines now. You might have heard of them.

But there are lots of tips and tricks on how to get the best use out of your nappies. In the days of terry squares, when everyone used them, you could get that “garden fence advice” from your next door neighbour. But with the decline in usage amongst parents of washable nappies, and the increase in choices available, that garden fence advice is no longer readily available.

And that’s why the advice service provided by The Nappy Lady and your allocated advisor is so important, and why we offer you a broad range of practical nappy tips if you want to browse for yourself.

It’s more broadband advice than garden fence advice, but it achieves the same purpose. Nappy advice for the modern age. Your mother would have loved it.

www.thenappylady.co.uk

The Three Rs

Once upon a time, they used to teach the Three Rs at primary school – which was ironic, really, because two of them didn’t begin with R in the first place: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.

But nowadays, there are three real Rs that we should all be doing, if we care about the future of our environment: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

Reduce – don’t put so much stuff into landfill in the first place. Cut out unnecessary packaging and stop buying stuff you don’t need or will throw away (an amazing 40% of the foodstuffs we buy are destined for the bin, I read somewhere). Really. look around your home and wonder whether you really need that many pairs of shoes, all of those handbags etc etc. Full marks to Sainsbury’s who are now selling a litre of milk in a plastic bag, for you to empty into a jug when you get home.

Reuse – stop using plastic bags, for example. Buy a cloth one and reuse it each trip. At least the supermarkets are helping with this, by removing plastic bags from their counters. Obviously, cloth nappies are the ultimate reuse item, in this context. But there are loads of things that can be reused, if you think about it. All you have to do is think.

Recycle – Don’t throw stuff away when you no longer have a use for it. Someone else might be needing it. Find your local freecycle operation – it’s a bit like free ebay: you put an ad up offering something you no longer need, and someone in your area will contact you if they want it. Or you can put up a wanted ad. Two simple examples: my sons’ outgrown and no longer useful potty. Yes, they only cost a few pounds in Mothercare, but the one I had was perfectly good, and it would have been wasteful to throw it in the bin. I put it on freecycle, and a lady picked it up that very afternoon. Similarly, I needed to borrow a dehumidifier for a week. I put up a wanted ad on freecycle, and received a number of kind loan offers. Even broken things can go on freecycle, as long as you make its condition clear – either someone might want it for parts, or someone who is a bit handy might want to repair it for themselves. The lack of repairability of most consumer durables these days, when a replacement is so cheap to buy, drives me insane, so it is nice to know there are people out there who can do it still.

To find your nearest freecycle operation, go to www.yahoogroups.com and do a search for freecycle.

Finally, don’t forget that you can always sell things on ebay. That way, you can also make a bit of money – which you are not, repeat not!, going to spend on more useless stuff you don’t need. Save it for a holiday or something. Get the kids involved in finding toys they no longer play with, that you can either ebay for cash or freecycle for free.

www.thenappylady.co.uk

Fallacies about eco-disposables

Many people choose not to use cloth nappies, but instead use so-called eco-disposables. When asked why – out of interest, not criticism, I hasten to add – they usually say it makes them feel better because they believe they are less damaging from a landfill point of view.

Sorry to disappoint, but that’s not the case at all. The term eco can mean just about anything. From a supplier’s point of view, it roughly translates as “makes people feel better about the environment,” even when there is little basis in fact.

Some eco disposables are so named because they are produced according to the most environmentally friendly production methods, like Moltex Oko nappies are. However, this makes no comment at all about their landfill implications. Actually, if you look at the Moltex packaging (and read German, as I happen to do!), the packaging for the nappies is degradable (whoopee!), but there is nothing especially degradable about the nappies themselves.

Other nappies, such as the Tushies, are chemically friendly, rather than landfill friendly. In fact, that company specifically makes no environmental claims at all.

So, if you are buying eco disposables to reduce your landfill footprint, I’m afraid you’ve been misled.

And let me confuse you even further, now.

Some companies claim that Moltex nappies are compostable. I’m not even going to give you the website address of the Irish company which is worst for this. And I’ll tell you why.

I, as The Nappy Lady, have received two very distraught phone calls from parents (the Dads, in both cases) who happily bought Moltex nappies for full time use, with the intention of composting them. This was their compromise, as they did not feel cloth nappy usage was practical for their situation. They followed the instructions on the Irish website to the letter on building their appropriate composting area.

A few months later, they were on the phone to me, practically in tears. You see, it is all very well trying to compost the odd nappy – it does indeed work fine, and the superabsorbent gel doesn’t break down, but works in exactly the same way as those water-capturing granules for poor soils do (since that is exactly what it is, really). But a couple of nappies a week, or maybe even one a night is one thing. 

But imagine how quickly a pile of 35 nappies a week builds up in a suburban city garden. Those of you who use disposables and see how they fill the bin know that that is quite a pile to be disposed of each week. You’d have to have a hell of a composting facility to deal with that.

Actually, a major disposables manufacturer in the USA about 15 years ago did a feasibility study on composting their disposables (without an eco label in sight) and decided it was perfectly viable. But they quietly shelved the project, when the ugly questions of who was going to pay for it, how would people separate their diaper waste stream and – most importantly – did a company focused on single use disposable products really want to focus their customers’ minds on the problems of landfill raised their heads.

And what happened to my distressed callers? In both cases, they ended up having the health and safety people at their local council come round to dispose of their home made landfill sites. And that in itself was hugely distressing, given that the whole reason they had got into this situation was because they wanted to reduce landfill problems.

Finally, I did contact the Irish website to ask them not to publish misleading information about composting of nappies on their website. They told me, firstly, that they have more space in Ireland to compost and secondly that people in Ireland obviously know more about composting that English people do.

Needless to say, they continue to disseminate nonsense, and deny all responsibility for any landfill problems arising. 

In any event, whatever goes into landfill, whether it is described as degradable or not, will stay there. UK landfill sites are deliberately managed to minimise degradation, because of the problems of excess methane production. So what goes in stays in, and in 5-10 years will be capped over with concrete anyway. 

My own advice is this: if cloth nappies aren’t for you, use Moltex if you feel strongly about the environmental impact of the production process, or Tushies if you are concerned about the chemical impacts. And mainstream disposables if you like. You can always compost your food waste, instead.

www.thenappylady.co.uk

An important day in the world of nappies

Back in 2005, the Environment Agency produced a Life Cycle Analysis report comparing the environmental impact of disposable nappies versus washable nappies.

At the time, the cloth nappy community was up in arms, as the report was so unfair. Statistically, it was nonsense: 2,000 disposables users were quizzed on their (almost identical) nappy usage, but only 23 cotton nappy users were quizzed on their (massively variable) nappy usage. No wonder the figures were a bit silly – it even concluded that 7.5% of cloth nappy users iron their nappies.

I’m The Nappy Lady, and have been since 1999 or so, and I think I’ve only ever come across a couple of people who iron their nappies, so I’m thinking that 7.5% is a bit suspect, to say the least.

Although the report did draw the correct conclusions, in a low key way, the media only picked up on the headline news that using cloth and using disposables had comparable environmental impacts. Which made things harder for those promoting the benefits of cloth nappies. Some people can’t wait to close their minds and seize on “received wisdom” when it matches their own views.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Let’s just say the last LCA report (due to be published by DEFRA tomorrow) came to the same basic conclusion, but on a much less statistically flawed data set, and ended with a very clear indicator that the environmental impact of cloth nappy usage is much more in the hands of the user than of the manufacturer.

The environmental impact of cloth nappy production and usage is the equivalent of releasing 570kg of carbon dioxide into the air. The environmental impact of disposable nappy production and usage is the equivalent of releasing 550kg of carbon dioxide into the air.

Not hugely different, are they?

And the very last paragraph of the report spells it out in detail:

The environmental impacts of using shaped reusable nappies can be higher or lower than using disposables, depending on how they are laundered. The report shows that, in contrast to the use of disposable nappies, it is consumers’ behaviour after purchase that determines most of the impacts from reusable nappies.

Now, will the media report that? I wonder. I can’t say I’m holding my breath.

www.thenappylady.co.uk