Good for the Environment
Nearly 3 billion nappies are thrown away in the UK every year, this equates to almost 8 million nappies thrown out every day, and 90% of these end up in landfill sites. We do not know how long it takes for the plastic components of disposable nappies to break down, it is estimated at over 500 years. This implies that almost every used disposable nappy that has ever been made is still sitting in a landfill somewhere.*
When using disposable nappies a new
baby will considerably increase a household's waste production and with
the advent of Fife Council introducing a fortnightly collection of household
waste, it makes sense to use real nappies, and puts a stop to unnecessary
waste being placed in your grey bin and landfill.
© Women's Environmental Network (WEN). Reproduced with kind permission.
Nappy Facts
Babies will need around 4500 nappy changes until they are potty trained - would you rather buy thousands of disposables or around 20 cotton nappies?
When disposable nappies are thrown into landfill they swell as they absorb rain water making them over twice their original size.
4.5 trees are used to make the pulp for disposable nappies for 1 baby over a period of 2.5 years.
1 cup of crude oil goes in to make one disposable nappy - this is a non renewable source.
Unlike disposable nappies and their smelly contents being transported to landfill, using real nappies allows solid waste to be hygienically flushed down the loo, where it should be.
Disposable nappies use
- 3.5 times more energy
- 2.3 times more waste water
- 8.3 times more non-renewable raw materials
- 90 times more renewable raw materials
Disposable nappies create 60 times more solid waste and require 30 times more land than washable nappies. *
Real Nappies can be recycled as can be used for another baby, given away or sold.
Fife Details
Fife Council currently spends over £84,000 per year sending disposable nappies to landfill.
Over 20 million disposable nappies are sent to landfill in Fife every year!
The average weight of a soiled nappy is 0.2 kilograms, this means that over 4000 tonnes of nappies are sent to landfill each year. Fife Council is currently charged £21 per tonne to send waste to landfill. Therefore the cost per annum would be over eighty four thousand pounds. The cost of sending waste to landfill is to increase significantly over the next five years from £21 per tonne, at present, to £35 per tonne by 2010-11 - Source Fife Council