from The Ecologist, April 2001
Changing a nappy for the first time can be a traumatic experience. A friend of mine will never forget taking her tiny, wrinkled, new-born baby into a hospital cubicle to attempt the task. Like all new parents, she was dazed, nervous and not at all sure what to do.
She succeeded in removing the nappy that a nurse had expertly put on. But before she could manage anything else, her little girl's loaded bowels literally exploded and showered their sweet-smelling contents everywhere. "It was splattered on the walls, on the floor and on me," she recalled. "Oh my God, I thought, is it going to be like this every time?"
Nothing in your life prepares you for changing nappies. You can't consciously remember wearing them. For the previous nine months or so you have been entirely focussed on the process of labour and the miraculous act of birth itself. As a result, when the baby finally arrives, you suddenly realise that you have not the faintest idea how to look after it.
Your life has suddenly been turned upside down. You can't just pop out to the pub, go to the cinema or climb a hill. This tiny, wide-eyed bundle of howling, puking, dribbling, pissing, shitting humanity rips at your heart every moment of every day. Progressively sleep-deprived, you start to feel tired - more desperately tired than you have ever felt before.
It is in the midst of all this that parents have to learn about nappies, and learn fast. Most probably don't think about it too deeply. They just do whatever comes easiest, and put any awkward issues to the back of their minds. In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that the environmental impact of the type of nappy they are using is not at the top of their agenda.
The vulnerability of panicking first-time parents is also ruthlessly exploited by the profit-hungry multinational companies that make throw-away nappies. Free samples are given away in maternity hospitals, their 'convenience' is heavily advertised on the television and expensive-looking brochures are produced claiming that disposal nappies are really kind to the environment.
But what is the truth? How do the environmental claims made by disposable nappy manufacturers stack up? What are the alternatives and how do they work? What are the real comparative impacts on the environment? What, in short, should parents be doing if they want to be responsible without being drowned in an sea of baby-waste?
It is to answer these and other questions that the Women's Environmental Network is holding its second 'Real Nappy Week' on 23-29 April 2001. The aim is to encourage parents to choose reusable cloth nappies in preference to disposables, and to persuade hospitals, local authorities and local groups to support them (see box below).
Significant progress has been made since the first 'Real Nappy Week' in 2000, on which the organisers are hoping to build. Over 80 local authorities are actively promoting real nappies, some hospitals like Chichester and Lister now use real nappies in their neonatal, maternity and paediatric wards and local groups have been set up around the country.
The money to fund the campaign comes from a government initiative to divert the tax being levied on landfill waste dumps into schemes that help reduce the amount of waste created in the first place. "When I started six years ago, I was a lone voice promoting the benefits of real nappies," said the founder of the real nappy movement, Gina Purrmann. "Now we have a full-scale operation."
The growing success of the campaign has inevitably provoked a reaction from the disposable nappy manufacturers, who are worried about their profit margins. Throw-away nappies, given that parents have to buy scores of them every week for years, are a serious money spinner. Companies do not want people to realise that they might be wrecking the environment at the same time.
So, for example, Procter and Gamble, who make the best-selling 'Pampers' throw-away nappies, have produced a very pretty booklet called 'Caring for babies, families and our environment'. It's got a charming picture of a mother and two young children feeding ducks on the front cover.
The launch of Pampers in the UK during the 1980s, it modestly informs us, "began a revolution in baby care". Mums could do away with all the chores of cloth nappies and spend more time with their children, or "pursuing their lifestyles". Dads are not deemed worthy of a mention.
While these carefree mums are "pursuing their lifestyles", they don't need to have a guilty conscience about the environment. "We want our consumers to know the facts about the actual environmental profile of our products and all we are doing to improve them further," the booklet proclaims.
Over a series of gently green-tinged pages, we are treated to a litany of the environmentally friendly features of Pampers. Did you know, for example, that the introduction of 'supersorber', an oil-based polymer that absorbs liquid, reduced the average weight of the nappies by 30%? And that that depleted fewer raw materials, used less energy and reduced pollution?
All very interesting, no doubt, if somewhat off the point. What about the impact of having to throw away every nappy you use as rubbish? Don't worry, Procter and Gamble have got that covered too. There is "no consensus", they say, on whether reusable or disposal nappies are better from an environmental standpoint.
"Both options consume energy, water and raw materials; both have environmental emissions, but in the absolute, both options are a relatively small share of all human activities," the booklet states. In other words, whatever you do with nappies has some impact on the environment, but it's not much compared to the military-industrial complex, globalising governments, multinational capitalist corporations and lots of other things. As if "in the absolute", our only choice is to act with absolute irresponsibility.
Then, at last, the booklet gets to the nub of it. "Although disposables produce more solid waste and consume more raw materials, cloth nappies result in more water consumption due to washing, and also produce more waterborne emissions." The fact that disposables create more waste is inescapable, but if it is combined with unquantified assertions about the other impacts from reusables, maybe readers will not notice.
Even if they do, the next ploy is to just try and baffle them with some jargon. Apparently, it's all down to "life cycle inventories", a way of quantifying all the environmental consequences of a product. And what do these life cycle inventories say about disposable versus reusable nappies, according to the good men and women from Procter and Gamble's consumer relations department? "While there are numerical differences due to different methods, assumptions, geographies and regional infrastructures, they consistently support the general conclusion that neither type of nappy is environmentally superior in all aspects."
It is those last three weasel words "in all aspects" that give the game away. Of course reusable nappies may not be superior in every single aspect because they do need to be washed. But the key question - which is better overall - is ducked. And it is ducked because Procter and Gamble simply don't like the answer.
Back in 1991 the company commissioned two studies to compare the ecological costs of reusable versus disposable nappies. They both concluded - surprise, surprise - that there was little difference. Procter and Gamble used the results as the basis of an advertising campaign claiming that disposable nappies did no more harm to the environment than reusables.
In response the Women's Environment Network, which has long led on this issue, commissioned another study from Landbank consultants. This showed that the two Procter and Gamble studies had concentrated on nappies in use, where reusables have their greatest impact, to the exclusion of other parts of the' lifecycle, like manufacture and waste, where disposables are at a disadvantage.
The industry-sponsored studies, in other words, were skewed in favour of disposable nappies. Landbank then used the raw data from the studies to recalculate the comparison and make it more realistic. The results, set out in the table below, were dramatic.
Environmental impact of nappies per infant, per yearImpact/ reusable nappies/ disposable nappies
Energy/ 2532 Megajoules/ 8900 Megajoules
Waste water/ 12.4 cubic metres/ 28 cubic metres
Non-regenerable raw materials/ 25 kilograms/ 208 kilograms
Renewable raw materials/ 4 kg/ 361 kg
Domestic solid waste/ 4 kg/ 240 kg
Land for raw materials/ 1,150-6,800 hectares/ 29,500-32,300 hectaresSource: Women's Environment Network
Disposable nappies were shown to use 3.5 times as much energy, 2.3 times more waste water and 8.3 times as many irreplaceable raw materials as reusable nappies. Worse, disposables consumed 90 times more renewable raw materials, created 60 times more solid waste and required up to 30 times more land. It was, overall, a pretty conclusive picture. Throw-away nappies were much more environmentally damaging than the alternative.
The Women's Environmental Network used the Landbank study as the basis of a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority over Procter and Gamble's claims about disposables. In 1992 the authority accepted the environmental arguments made by the network and upheld the complaint. The company was asked to stop implying that the results of its studies were generally accepted. Rather, they were "simply one side of an ongoing argument".
It is only necessary to think through the scale of activity and the chain of impacts caused by throw-away nappies to appreciate the problem. Assuming, conservatively, six nappy changes every 24 hours for two and a half years before potty-training works, every child needs a total of 5,475 clean nappies. In Britain over eight million disposables are used every day, making up 50% of all the waste produced by a family with one baby.
Most disposables are discarded into in dustbins and comprise four percent of the total of all household waste, or about 800,000 tonnes a year. By any reckoning that is a lot of waste. It is nearly all taken to what are euphemistically called 'landfill sites', i.e. large holes in the ground around towns into which most of our rubbish is unceremoniously dumped.
Landfill is unsightly, smelly, potentially dangerous, expensive and patently unsustainable. The rubbish rots and gives off gases like methane which can explode, as well as cause the global warming which is disrupting the world's climate. Acids are released which dissolve metals into liquids which leach out of waste dumps and can poison local rivers.
Throw-away nappies contain some substances, including human waste, that rot away quickly. But the artificial plastic and chemical components can take up to 500 years before they fully decompose. That's quite a legacy for future generations. The total cost to the British council taxpayer of collecting, transporting and dumping disposable nappies in landfill sites is estimated at £40 million a year.
The industry has little to say in response to these arguments, and the points it does make sometimes seem laughable. Modern landfill sites are lined with plastic to prevent leakage, protests Procter and Gamble. "Within landfill sites, Pampers take up surprisingly little space," the company continues.
"This is because the nappies are easily compressed in size. In addition laboratory scale studies have shown that they fit and occupy the cavities that are formed between bulky pieces of waste." So that's alright then. Never mind the putrescence, the pollution, the persistence - Pampers are no problem because they can be squashed between sofas and old filing cabinets.
The main alternative to landfill, which is increasingly being considered by local authorities, is waste incineration. But the problem with burning disposable nappies, as with other plastic waste, is that it can lead to emissions of cancer-causing dioxins to the atmosphere. That is not a brilliant idea, either.
As if all that were not enough, new scientific research is beginning to throw up other potential hazards with disposable nappies. In 2000 the Women's Environmental Network commissioned a scientific analysis of five leading brands of disposable nappies: Pampers, Huggies, Sainsbury's, Boots and Benetton.
Traces of a toxic 'gender-bender' chemical called tributyl tin were discovered in all of them. Although the amounts were tiny, campaigners claimed that babies could be in contact with 3.6 times the tolerable daily intake recommended by the World Health Organisation. Tributyl tin, which is used to prevent limpets from clinging to boats and in the manufacture of some plastics, is known to disrupt the hormones which govern sexuality.
The chemical has been found to cause shellfish to change sex and there are fears it could do the same to humans. That is why it is being progressively banned around the world. Although Ann Link, the coordinator of the Women's Environment Network, stresses that no-one knows how much of the chemical might be absorbed by a baby's skin via nappies, she is worried.
"We are extremely concerned that a product is being sold for use on newborn babies even though the manufacturers know it contains a chemical which, in tiny amounts, can disrupt hormones. Tributyl tin is a chemical which should not be made, let alone occur in babies' nappies," she says.
The disposable nappy industry reacted by denying that the chemical was present, or by suggesting that the levels were so small as to pose no risk. "Disposable nappies are completely safe," said the Absorbent Hygiene Products Manufacturers Association. "All the manufacturers agree that tributyl tin should not be in nappies and if traces are found they will take every step to eliminate them."
Another study published in autumn 2000 suggested that disposable nappies could be the cause of another problem - male infertility. There is mounting evidence that average sperm counts in the developed world are dropping. Research suggests that they have fallen by almost half over the last sixty years and are still falling by as much as 2% a year.
Now a team from the paediatric department of the University of Kiel in Germany has discovered that little boys' testicles are overheating inside plastic nappies. In order to develop properly, testicles have to be kept cooler than the average body temperature. That is why they hang between the legs.
Doctors measured the temperature of the scrotum of 48 healthy boys aged between zero and 55 months. They found that when the children wore plastic nappies, the temperature was consistently higher than when they wore cloth nappies. "The physiological testicular cooling mechanism is blunted and often completely abolished during plastic nappy use," they conclude.
The doctors were testing the hypothesis that "exposure to increased testicular temperature for prolonged duration during early childhood as a result of the use of modern disposable plastic-lined nappies could be an important factor in the decline of semen quality and the increasing incidence of testicular cancer in adult age." Although it will take more work to prove the theory, the initial evidence is alarming.
Again, though, it is dismissed by the disposables industry. "There is no evidence to support the assertions made by this study, which would appear to be implausible," insisted Peter Stephenson the Absorbent Hygiene Products Manufacturers Association. "The safety of our products is of paramount importance."
Less seriously, throw-away nappy producers sometimes argue that their absorbent materials are so efficient that they leave a baby's bottom dry - and hence less prone to nappy rash, the curse of many a child. But this is not born out by scientists who have investigated the issue. "Among infants with 'very bad' or 'quite bad' nappy rash, the type of nappy worn did not emerge as a significant factor," concluded Jean Golding, a medical researcher from the University of Bristol.
"Contrary to widespread belief, disposable nappies seem to have little protective effect. This is an important point as disposables are so expensive. Parents' money may be better spent elsewhere." Indeed.
So having considered all the evidence, what are the choices? An expensive, polluting, resource-consuming, waste-generating piece of potentially toxic plastic that doesn't help nappy rash and profits multinationals? Or a cheaper, soft, cloth alternative which reduces waste, saves resources, limits environmental damage and helps sustain small companies - but has to be washed like underwear?
Not much choice really, is there?
Reusable nappies: the practical alternative to disposablesFor most of the last century the most widely-used nappies were reusable. Small, square, 'Terry' towelling had to be folded in complex bottom-hugging shapes, secured with a huge safety pin and covered with a crude pair of plastic pants meant to prevent leakage. But unless you had a degree in origami, or amazing luck, these crude but traditional arrangements usually ended up falling down or otherwise spilling their contents over the kitchen floor.
Then they had to be washed. What a time-consuming unpleasant palaver that was! Soaking in large, sour-smelling vats of bleach, scrubbing, scraping, boiling and drying before they could be refolded into the 'triangles', 'rectangles' and 'kites' recommended by the professionals. Then returned to wrap your baby's bottom, only to fall off again as soon as he or she stands up.
It was no wonder that when disposable nappies came along in the 1980s, they were welcomed by most parents with open arms. They were easier to use, they had sticky tape instead of safety pins and - blessing of blessing - you could just throw them away when they became soiled. OK, so they cost rather more and your dustbin was suddenly full of them, but surely anything was better than those awful Terries?
Disposable nappies were the products of years of innovative design and massive investment by multinational companies keen to capture and expand a lucrative market. Of course they were more "convenient" than the towelling squares used by our grandparents. But over the last twenty years - at last - things have begun to change.
The reusable, cloth nappies now available can really give disposables a run for their money. They have stolen some of the disposables' design ideas, are shaped like pants rather than towels and have discovered velcro. Some have three plush layers, some are made of cotton that feels as soft as silk and some come equipped with thin liners which can be flushed down the toilet. Unlike Terries, these cool, designer natural nappies actually work.
Their manufacturers - dozens of small-scale firms up and down the country with names like 'Cuddlebabes', 'Snuggle Bums' and 'Sam I Am' - say that boiling, scrubbing and soaking are also things of the past. For most nappies, most of the time, all that is needed is a 60 degree centigrade whirl in a modern washing machine. Or in some areas there are special nappy washing services that whisk away dirty nappies and deliver freshly-laundered replacements to your door.
Crucially for many parents, reusable nappies are much cheaper because you do not need to go out and buy more every week. For each baby you need maybe 18 reusable nappies, compared to having to buy about 50 disposables a week. The Real Nappy Project run by the Women's Environment Network calculates that using reusable nappies instead of disposables for your first child can save up to £600.
Rob Edwards is a free-lance journalist and the father of two growing girls in Edinburgh. Between 1990 and 1996 he changed about 2,000 nappies, both disposable and reusable.
