Wednesday 24 July 2013

An important role for the royal bottom

There are several reasons why London parents get real nappies:

We don't like to hang around: we want to exit the hospital quickly after the birth. A cloth nappy shows baby has peed and then you can go! More difficult to tell with stay-dry disposables that can prolong the wait at the hospital

We don't want to waste money: if you buy a set of real nappies for approx. £200 instead of spending £10 a week on disposables you've paid off the upfront cost in 20 weeks

We don't like waste: if you use disposable nappies on just one baby your household waste is likely to double

We like incentives such as nappy vouchers, cashbacks and free trial packs from our local London authority. They need us to reduce waste and real nappies saves them c £160 per baby by cutting the nappy waste they have to collect and send to landfill

We want to enjoy changing our babies: you're going to change your baby about 4,500 times you want to love it.

And we're not afraid to stand out from the crowd: just look at these royal nappies in the London Life section of the Evening Standard

Love real nappies, love London, love it if the royal baby's bottom is clad in cloth and joins London babies in reducing disposable nappy waste around the world!

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Ask the Expert | Potty Training



Following our recent blog post New thoughts on Potty Training which received a record amount of interest within a few days, we have asked June Rogers, a paediatric continence specialist with over 20 years experience to answer your questions on toilet/potty and night training.

June will be answering your questions on Wednesday 17th July from 10am until 2pm, on whatever challenges you and your toddler are facing on your potty training journey...so get asking! Please start leaving your questions here now!

Tuesday 9 July 2013

Feedback from our 2013 pilot project

We just want to give you some feedback on a research project we are carrying out at Real Nappies for London. Our aim is to find out why some parents who intend to use real nappies don't get round to it. And when they do, what happens?

We've found some parents who were willing to take a trial pack of real nappies, instead of a voucher. We are offering them additional nappies, wraps, liners etc up to the value of £100 if they agree to meet up with us once a month to let us know how things are going. It's so interesting.

We're approaching the end now as the last meetings are in August. It will all be written up at the end. Meanwhile we just wanted to share some thoughts from the participants. The main things they are saying are:

1 the main barrier was thinking they had to find the perfect nappy. What they've realised is that all the nappies work. But some suit their baby (and lifestyle) more than others. But it's only by using them that you find out.

2 they thought that starting to use real nappies would be a really big project. But their experience is that by starting out with a few nappies and using them part time along-side disposables it hasn't been a big change or needed a big investment of time and effort.

Any additional comments from participants would be great. We know parents love to hear what other parents say directly.

Thursday 4 July 2013

Knowaste nappy recycling plant closed last month

So why isn't Real Nappies for London crowing about this? We said it was a bad idea. It's good news, right?

Actually we just feel sad that it was opened in the first place. We just regret that all the money c £20 million and trust put into this plant wasn't put into nappy laundering services across the UK. It's not great news, it's a missed opportunity and 10 wasted years when we could have been developing the convenient green alternative to disposables; nappy washing services, creating green jobs and local eco-enterprises and reducing the impact of the production, transportation and landfilling of 4,500 single-use nappies per baby.

Wednesday 3 July 2013

A Waste Prevention Plan for England will include nappies, right?

Some of you will know that the government is currently consulting over a Waste Prevention Plan for England. From what we've heard so far nappies will not be mentioned. Defra's argument for not mentioning disposable nappy waste, even though it is 3% of the household waste stream and costs an awful lot of money is that
a the type of nappy you use should be a personal choice (who's calling for a ban of disposable nappies?) and
b washable nappies CAN be as bad for the environment as disposables if people boil, iron and tumble dry them.

So we think these are ridiculous excuses. People who use washables generally do it to be green and so have eco washing routines. At Real Nappies for London we know this because we ask people how they wash their nappies and they tell us. In fact because of the way they wash them they have approximately 40% lower carbon impacts than single use nappies and are zero waste.

Anyway it's pretty clear the way things are going. Central Government is not going to say anything about reducing disposable nappy waste in the Waste Prevention Plan for England due to be out by the end of this year. That means local authorities need to do all they can to incentivise the use of real nappies in their borough to ensure the cost of sending disposable nappy waste (including landfill tax), is brought down. We have some standard letters you can use to send to your local MP and local councillor to ask them to support Real Nappies for London. You can find a link in the bottom right hand corner under News here.