Cloth / Reusable nappies - advice?

Well they can be used as flame-retardant, seriously have you ever tried to burn now? It just does not work.
 
Why would you even think of trying to burn a disposable nappy? You have any idea the chemicals they put in those things? The only 'retard-ant' is you :wtf:
 
I have my own theory about recycling. See, in winter the only trash I put out is a shopping bag of ash. All trash gets "converted to heat" in winter :D Well all trash except nappy's, cause they just don't burn.
 
Vinia said:
I'm doing the cloth nappy thing. People imagine it's those old white squares from back in the day...they are not like that at all. The ones I use are the modern cloth diapers that work just like disposable ones. I've blogged about it where I also explain how they work, money saved etc:

http://therainqueen.com/category/baby-items/cloth-diapers-nappies/

You put liners on the nappy, so when there's poop, you just grab the liner filled with the stuff and flush it (bio-degradeable liners). There's no reason to have to get in contact with poop more than you would with a disposable.
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And you dont end up with magots in the bins at the end of the week! Because poop goes where it belongs, in the toilet.
 
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Thanks Cerebus for fighting the good fight here. If you go onto our Facebook page South African cloth nappy users, you will see many totally addicted mommies. Cloth in the modern day is fun, healthy for babies bum, easy to care for and lovely to put on, and just sooo cute with all the lovely patterns etc. Washing them is a treat. Put them in a dry bucket, on wash day, give a rinse, wash in a longer cycle, rinse again and hang. No mess no fuss! In my daughters 18 months we bought two packs of disposables, and mainly because she had to spend time in hospital.

Disposable is just that - convenient. It is bad for baby, all the chemicals in the nappy, all the damage to the environment, as above picture, all the magots in the bin on a hot day, and yip, R400 a month out of your pocket, if you can afford it or not.

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Anyhow most have been said. It is a personal choice yip, but dont say you DONT LIKE IT, if you know nothing about it, let alone seen it or touched it, or used it. I love it! My daugther loves it, and she has healthy bums. Oh, with cloth less rashes happen because you change them every 2 hours, with disposables it is said you can leave a nappy for 12 hours, wow, all those chemicals on a newborn skin for 12 hours.....:wtf:
 
Our little one never had any issues and we exclusively use disposables. Just like with dummies you get those that say it is from the devil and those who use it. Thankfully we have a dummy free child, but I can honestly not see what damage it does to those who use it. Same goes for breast feeding, we have been to the doctor twice and it was nothing serious. Maybe that is because she gets mommy milk, maybe not. Bottom line (pun intended) is do what works best for.

On average we probably produce one black bag full of dirty diapers every 4 weeks. That adds up to about 25 black bags now that we begun potty training. Compare that to the thousands of litres of water we saved because we have to do not do washing everyday, nor pollute water with chemicals and I'd say its all good.
 
Wow, I didn't even know there was a Facebook group. MrsC, I'd love to interview you for my blog. Check your PMs later this week.
 
Textile Guy, your username implies you should already know about this stuff. :p
 
Rouxenator said:
Reusable nappies does take its toll on the environment in terms of washing
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Care to run the numbers of each and find out? I mean obviously it's not as good as burning plastic, chemicals and feces in some kind of misguided attempt at recycling.
 
Obviously everything I burn in my misguided attempt at recycling is out of the equation here, although crocs burn nicely and this one time I chucked in the old center console of my car, joh! Crazy.

Anyway pyromania aside, it is foolish to think that not using disposable diapers saves the environment of 25 black bags filled with diapers. There is the water you used, the water you polluted with cleaning chemicals, the electricity used and obviously the CO2 released during the generation of the electricity.
 
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Rouxenator said:
Anyway pyromania aside, it is foolish to think that not using disposable diapers saves the environment of 25 black bags filled with diapers. There is the water you used, the water you polluted with cleaning chemicals, the electricity used and obviously the CO2 released during the generation of the electricity.
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Yes there is an environmental trade-off in all choices. Personally I'm not much of an envirophile so it doesn't register highly on my priority scale. But I would take a fairly good wager that you will end up balancing quite clearly on the cloth nappy scale if you did do the hard numbers. After all there is also the production, manufacture and distribution of the disposables and their total non-biodegradability which is going to impact the planet indefinitely.

In fact though, I think we ended up just preferring cloth nappies. They're really cute. I enjoy changing the little one's bum and picking a pink one to match her dress or whatever. They're not much more overhead to manage, and that's coming from 3 kids' worth of experience in both types of nappy.
 
Rouxenator said:
Obviously everything I burn in my misguided attempt at recycling is out of the equation here, although crocs burn nicely and this one time I chucked in the old center console of my car, joh! Crazy.

Anyway pyromania aside, it is foolish to think that not using disposable diapers saves the environment of 25 black bags filled with diapers. There is the water you used, the water you polluted with cleaning chemicals, the electricity used and obviously the CO2 released during the generation of the electricity.
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Over 2.5 years the energy difference in going reusable is 2x greater, water usage 6x greater while resource usage is 7x less, and waste produced 100x less. I'd rather use more water and electricity over increased oil usage and leaving interesting chemicals in landfills for (apparently) 50-500 years

iirc the above numbers are for the old school cloth things, which I would imagine require more water and electricity than the newer stuff to clean. So there would be some improvement over the above numbers, but I'm not sure how much
 
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Disposable diapers are actually fairly flimsy once they get wet. I think they will more or less be degraded after about a year or so.
 
cerebus said:
Care to run the numbers of each and find out? I mean obviously it's not as good as burning plastic, chemicals and feces in some kind of misguided attempt at recycling.
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Don't forget the electricity.

I don't put bamboo nappies on quick wash either. I do a proper hot load and that uses both extra water and electric.

Also I don't wash anything else with them... but perhaps that is excessive.

I still think they are better but unless you hand wash them with recycled water heated by solar power... and use some kind of bio degradable wash... there is still going to be environmental impact.



Then there is load shedding :/
 
Rouxenator said:
Disposable diapers are actually fairly flimsy once they get wet. I think they will more or less be degraded after about a year or so.
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You just make up stuff don't you.
Nerfherder said:
I don't put bamboo nappies on quick wash either. I do a proper hot load and that uses both extra water and electric.
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You shouldn't wash bamboos at high temps. 40c is the max. Higher will damage them. That's how we ruined a whole batch of nappies in the past I think:
http://www.bamboobaby.co.za/why-bam-boo/how-to-wash-bamboo-nappies
Don't wash at very high temperatures as heat causes the bamboo fabric to harden, affecting the absorbency of the bamboo. Heat also affects the outer cover causing the waterproof layer to delaminate.
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