When I was pregnant with Ivy, I stumbled upon the following startling statistics:
A baby will use between 4000 and 6000 nappies before they are potty trained which equates to almost 1 tonne of waste.
Each year (in the UK alone) approximately 3 billion disposable nappies are added to landfill sites, representing 2-3% of all household waste.
It is estimated that single use nappies take more than 500 years to decompose.
In the UK, 11 billion single use wipes are disposed of each year. (To give you a sense of scale, laid end to end, this number of wipes would stretch to the moon and back… TWICE!!!)
Disposable wipes make up 93% of the material causing blockages in UK sewer systems, costing the country £100 million in reparations each year.
I had absolutely no idea! I used disposable nappies and wipes with Leo and the thought of having had such a negative impact on the environment was quite overwhelming! Then I read that
by swapping just one disposable nappy per day for a reusable one, approximately 1000 nappies could be saved from landfill during the time between a baby’s birth and the point at which they potty train.
Although quantitative date regarding disposable wipes is still being gathered, it is estimated that swapping to reusable wipes for the same time-period could result in a reduction of more than 20,000 wipes entering UK landfill sites and waterways.
Reading this made making a difference feel achievable…even exciting! After a bit (*a lot) of research, I bought a set of washable wipes and 3 cloths nappies, determined that I could manage 1 reusable nappy a day. Fast forward a year and we now have a collection of 20 nappies which has allowed us to use reusables full-time, day and night, for the last 9 months. I never imagined we would eliminate disposables altogether and it has taken some trial and error and a lot of advice from more experienced users to get us to this point, but I am so glad we gave it a go!
If you would like more information, I highly recommend visiting https://www.peanutandpoppet.com/pages/faqs or joining the Peanut and Poppet Hangout group on Facebook for friendly advice and support. Katrina, the founder of Peanut and Poppet has written a wonderful guest blog for Simply Birth entitled ‘5 ways to a sustainable motherhood’. Pop back on Earth Day (Thursday) to discover more.