So what is the true price associated with throw away vs cloth nappies? This article looks at the different factors associated with making the choice between throw away or re-usable nappies. These consist of; price to the environment, price to health and price to your pocket. Definitely plenty to believe about!
On the environment
They call them disposable nappies…never was something so wrongly named! You can’t flush or compost them, they fill up our landfills – where they remain for as much as 500 many years. It is a terrifying reality that each and every “disposable” nappy that has ever been made is still sitting, intact, in a land fill somewhere. Is this the heritage that we wish to pass down to our kids?
Britain chucks away 8 million diapers A DAY! That is 3 billion a year! They constitute 4% of all the UK’s household garbage – and 50% of all of the rubbish in a one-baby family. Not just that, 5 million trees are felled each and every year just to maintain UK babies in throw away nappies.
On your baby’s health
A study conducted at Kiel University in Germany in 2000 showed that the temperature inside disposable diapers was up to 5 degrees centigrade higher than in cloth nappies. It was suggested that for boys clothing particularly, this could endanger future fertility as the semen-producing function is developed within the initial 2 years of life, and is dependent on the testicular region becoming kept reasonably cool.
The chemical which makes disposable diapers so efficient is called sodium polyacrylate. This is a super-absorbent powder which, when it becomes wet, swells into a gel. You are able to sometimes see clear crystals of sodium polyacrylate on your baby’s bottom when you change a diaper. There are several doubts over the safety of sodium polyacrylate: not least amongst which is its creation of an illusion of dryness which could encourage the nappy (and its contents) to be left in place for longer than advisable, in conditions which are bacterially ideal for the growth of infection.
Other health concerns around disposable diapers consist of the fact that the wood pulp utilized in them is bleached using dioxins that are highly toxic chemicals recognized to trigger liver damage, immune system suppression and genetic harm in animal studies.
On your pocket
For each and every £1 spent on disposables, it expenses the taxpayer 10p to dispose of them! The total national price of this is £40 million a year.
Disposables come with a birth to potty price tag of as much as £1200, that is based on average nappy use being 2.5 years. Even when laundry expenses are factored in, a fabric nappy program will cost you approximately £400 from birth to potty. That’s a saving of as much as £800!!! These savings are also increased whenever you use the exact same diapers on a second or even third child.
You will find so several reasons that fabric nappies are a better choice for your baby, not least that most washable diaper parents find that they really PERFORM much better than disposables too!
Find more information about nappies and a wide range of boys clothing on-line at http://www.welovefrugi.com/boys-clothes/index.htm