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Monday, 29 September 2014

Saving the world one nappy at a time.....my cloth journey


I have been using cloth since Ru was 5 weeks old. Someone on my instagram led me onto the baba and boo web page 
Where you can buy a trail nappy with two inserts. 
The hardest part about getting a trail nappy is picking what gorgeous design you want!
There are soooooooooooooo many to choose from. 
I picked mr fox as my first ever cloth purchase!
I think I may have waited at least.....oh say an hour before I was back on the website and ordering a bundle! 

I am well and truly hooked.

I do have to stop myself buying nappies every now and then as I would happily blow all my money on pretty nappies! The point of cloth nappies being cheaper than disposables pretty much goes out the window when you see all the range you can get! 

You can sell them on as pre loved once you are potty trained so you'll make some money back off them.....that's if you can bare to part with them. 

I now have a lot of baba and boo nappies in ru's stash 

Some of my other nappies are tot bots, gnappies and some cheapies off amazon.

This is a handful of my favourite nappies

Why did I decided to go over to the cloth side? 

The amount of nappies we get through with the twins is ridiculous, we pretty much fill up one of our wheelie bins up a week with nappies! 
The smell is awful. 
They aren't as cute as reusables
And the money ...... We spend a fortune on them things that just end up in a bin then rotting away in a big hole in the ground! 

I wanted to change up my way of parenting, I'm also trying to be more Eco friendly and the benefits of reusables really won me over.



The Many Benefits of Using Reusable Nappies

During the course of infancy a baby will need approximately 6,000 nappy changes...if that baby has worn disposable nappies that is 6,000 nappies that will more than likely end up in a landfill where they will sit for hundreds of years- far longer on this planet than the baby that wore them. Shocking stuff...

Make the decision to use reusable nappies, and you are instantly diverting masses of waste from landfill sites, so go ahead and pat yourself of the back!



 Real Nappies- Better for the Planet

Around 8 million disposable nappies are used and thrown away every single day in the UK! ). 92% of these end up in landfill sites. We are a tiny island, and this is quite simply unsustainable. With such massive pressure on our landfill sites, the use of incinerators is going to increase, would you want one near you?

 
By using reusable instead of disposable nappies you can reduce your household waste by half. In the UK alone we get through 500,000 tonnes of disposable nappies every year, don't contribute to that.

 
It is estimated that disposable nappies take 500 years to breakdown, but no one is yet sure if they ever fully decompose as they have not been in existence long enough yet! That means that every single disposable nappy that has ever made its way into landfill is still there....

 
Ancient Canadian and Scandinavian forests are being felled, and animal species threatened, by deforestation in order to supply the UK’s paper pulp- the largest single component of the disposable nappy.

 
Instructions on disposable nappy packages recommend that fecal matter be deposited into the toilet before disposing of it, but less than one half of one percent of all waste from disposable nappies goes into the sewage system.

 
Instead the solids end up in landfills, the bacteria contaminating ground water and posing a threat to wildlife and the ecosystem. Not what you would necessary consider when throwing that nappy straight in the bin!

 
It is estimated that more than 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feedstocks and 20 pounds of chlorine are used to produce disposable nappies for one baby each year.


Real Nappies - Better for your wallet

 By ‘going cloth’ your family can incur a direct saving of up to £500, and even more for baby number 2, 3, 4, 5.....!
 

For every £1 spent on disposable nappies, there is a cost to the taxpayer of 10p to dispose of them! Help to ease the expense on your wallet both directly and indirectly by switching to reusable nappies.

Real Nappies- Better for your baby

By choosing real nappies, you are helping to protect your baby’s very delicate skin from the harsh chemicals, plastics and adhesives that form the basis of disposables. A baby’s skin is 5 times thinner than that of an adult, and it is vital that we carefully consider what we allow it to absorb. A baby is usually in a nappy for 24 hours a day, for 2.5 years...

 
In 2000, a scientific study was conducted at Kiel University in Germany which indicated that the widespread use of disposable nappies, which heat the testes above body temperature, is a significant factor in the declining fertility rates in Western European men.

 
Wide spread nappy rash surfaced with the introduction of the disposable nappy. A review of Proctor & Gambles own studies (The Landbank Consultancy Limited, 1991) found that the incidence of nappy rash increased from 7.1% to 61% with the increased use of disposable nappies.

 
Sodium Polyacrylate is the chemical used to absorb and hold urine in disposable nappies. This chemical has been linked to toxic shock syndrome and was banned from use in tampons in 1985. It can cause allergic reactions and it lethal to cats when inhaled. Its long term safety to a child's vulnerable genitals has not been assessed. In the short term, its super absorbency draws moisture away from the skin, in some instances causing severe nappy rash, and bleeding of perineal and scrotal tissue.

 
Problems reported to the Consumer Protection Agency relating to disposable nappies include; the discovery of wooden splinters plastic melting to the skin, choking on linings and paper tabs, ink staining the skin and chemical burns.

 
The design of disposable nappies means that the child can not feel when they are wet, which often leads to delayed potty training. Real nappy wearing babies will generally potty train sooner than those in disposables.




I was worried about the extra washing, but  my washing machine is on constantly so I hardly notice that I have extra loads with the nappies. 

I had looked at cloth when Noah was still a bump but being young and not to into saving the planet I discarded it and sold on the big bag of tot bots I had bough at the baby show. 
Oh how I regret that now!



I still use disposables at night time as I have yet to find a nappy that doesn't leak. Ru is a very heavy wetter and no matter how many insets I add to the nappy it always seems to leak :( 

Here are some links to some of my other favourite nappies 


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