Nappies…for those who care, and our church group, The Joondalup Thing cares as we use a few nappies between us, well not so much the adults but a few couples have new kids, especially Charlie and case…just a few days old! Congrats to them and welcome baby Danika!

In Australia we use 800 million disosable nappies every year. Each child in our group (as well as every other one is OZ will generate around 845kilos of nappy waste before being toilet trained. Disposable nappies can take up to 500 years to break down. The difference between cloth and disposable nappies is shown below with regards to the energy used in producing the nappies, the solid waste and the waste water generated and the matteriasls consumed. It also show how much more or less impact one is on the environment cloth nappies are compared to normal disposables. (I say normal as I am aware now that there are more and more environmentally friendly dispoables on the market.

The table does not all line up pretty, so here is the three figures…Column one is cloth nappies, two is disposable nappies and the third is the impact difference on the environment.
(MJ = megajoules)

Energy - 2532MJ 8900MJ 3.5X

Waste Water – 12.4m3 28m3 2.3X

Raw Matterials:
(Non renewable) - 25kg 208kg 8.3X

Raw matterials:
(Renewable) – 4kg 361kg 90X

Domestic Solid Waste – 4kg 240kg 60X

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