Cloth vs Disposable Nappies

The minute you tell people you are considering using cloth nappies, you’ll be met with a barrage of objections, I promise you. Here are a few of the most common ones, along with some suitable replies (assuming you decide to avoid the simple "what a load of tosh", which would be an equally correct response, but would be unlikely to win friends and influence people).

If you thought I was going to start off by mentioning the environmental cost of disposables, you thought wrong. Not that this is not important (quite the opposite, as you will see), but, in my opinion, no-one should ever choose real nappies because they have been "frightened off" disposables. You should choose them for positive reasons – and there are plenty of them, as I'll explain.

Perhaps you're surprised to see a page about the advantages of disposables on this website. I hope not, as I do try to present a balanced picture. It would be stupid of me to pretend that there are no plus points to disposables – after all, the manufacturers have persuaded millions of parents worldwide that they exist, so it is a question of assessing how important they genuinely are.

If you’ve got this far into the website, you already know I’m not a big fan of disposable nappies. You might think the only disadvantage of disposables is the landfill issue, but there are other things to consider as well. The total environmental cost is so much more, once you factor in the “hidden” impacts of the production line.

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.

Disposable pads provide a halfway house between real nappies and disposables. Where concern for the environment is more of an issue than cost, some people use them full time - however, they are around twice the cost of premium disposables, so they are by no means a budget option.

In 2008 the Environmental Agency published a revised life cycle analysis study into the environmental impacts of using shaped cloth nappies and disposable nappies. 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.

It’s not that the information is wrong – but the way it's selectively portrayed ensures that it's misleading. Advertising of all sorts works on precisely this basis. What follows are a few classic examples used by the disposable manufacturers to show you how this works. Bear in mind that I am quoting from actual publicity material that comes through your letterbox and appears on your TV screens every day.

There is a common myth that cloth nappies leak more than disposables however those of that use cloth know the opposite is true. We get many disposable nappy users come to us asking for help to stop their disposable nappy poo explosions or night time wee leaks. We'd love everyone to change to cloth but if that isn't an option for some families we do have steps to help them use their disposables more reliably.