My guest post on the Isonomia blog stirred up a few questions. I want to address the main one here, especially for European Week for Waste Reduction #EWWR2014: the frustration waste officers have with the slow uptake of reusable nappies. What waste and recycling managers love is quick wins and so, in their eyes recycling nappies is an attractive big risky spend whereas slow behavioural change of washables isn’t. NB the latter certainly has lower carbon impacts and water use than the former.
It also reduces the need for single-use liners and makes washing nappies at over 40 ℉ totally unnecessary unless baby has an infection. Plus ‘holding out’ also helps babies come out of nappies earlier. This reduces overall nappy waste and also reduces the stress of “toilet-training” for parent and child and saves parents money – plus no need for introducing separate nappy waste collections and recycling/composting plants.
Tell a mother, who has to walk 5 miles to collect clean water that we have clean running water on tap in our homes, washing machines and toilets but we choose to use single-use nappies and send the nappy waste to landfill, incineration, recycling, composting or whatever. What would she say? Why do we do it?
Long-term behavioural changes that reduce the need for nappies – period – has to be a better solution than dealing with an ever-increasing volume of disposable nappy waste . Please share this message this #EWWR2014 with all European local authorities and health professionals.
You may also want to check out this post for further information from the health professional’s perspective: Are potty training methods in the west …