Disposable nappies now form an estimated 4 per cent of all household waste in the UK, and 50 per cent of the waste of a household with one baby. Although it is illegal to dispose of untreated sewage in landfill, this is what disposables in effect do, releasing viruses and bacteria into the environment. The nappies also emit methane gas - a contributor to the greenhouse effect - and take up to 500 years to decompose completely.
This threat to the environment has now led to a number of hospitals and nurseries changing back to cotton nappies. Tammy Clark, principal of Play Plus Kindergarten in Hemel Hempstead, switched over to terries a year ago. 'The local refuse collectors refused to take the soiled disposable nappies, so every week the staff were taking large bin-loads to the council dump,' she explains. 'We could see what a mountain of nappies one nursery produced, so we decided to take action. We did have a considerable initial outlay, buying 60 cotton nappies to start with - these are the shaped ones with special Velcro pants which are easier to use. One or two parents were resistant to the idea at first, but that soon stopped.'
Tammy says that at first, if a child had nappy rash, the parents tended to blame the terries, but the staff change the children five times a day and have been able to show that it is other factors which cause nappy rash, such as a change in diet or the child being unwell. One or two families have even been so impressed that they have started using terries at home, though for the most part they are working parents who say they simply don't have the time.
All the nappies are laundered in the nursery, and there is another benefit too - Tammy used terries on her own four children and foster children, and says that the children are much quicker to potty train when using terries. 'At the nursery, I found that the children would think they were dry even when the gel in their nappies was sodden, because the nappy takes all the moisture away from the skin,' she says. 'In cloth nappies, the children don't like feeling the sensation of wetness and ask to be changed straight away, and they make the connection much faster.'
Using terries is cheaper, but most of the benefit goes to the parents, as they provided the bulk of the disposables before. 'Of course we did keep disposables here and use them, so we do have some saving,' says Tammy. 'But even if using terries did end up costing us more, it would be worth it.'
The Lister Hospital in Hertfordshire was the first hospital nationally to introduce an on-ward nappy policy, initially putting babies in at least one terry nappy and offering parents the use of an on-ward nappy washing service for free. The nappies are collected and laundered for the hospital by the Cotton Fresh Nappy Service in Stevenage.
St Richard's Hospital, Chichester, also provides terries on the neonatal, maternity and children's wards. The project there started when West Sussex County Council approached the hospital, wanting to reduce the amount of disposable nappies that were dumped in landfill sites. Since the scheme started last May, 4.5 million nappies have been diverted from household waste.
'The scheme has also worked very well on the wards,' says spokesperson Sue Kimble. 'The collection scheme has proved reliable and we have had parents who have liked the idea so much they use the service at home.'
Apart from environmental issues, there have also been a number of health concerns about the use of disposables. One scare was that certain brands were found to have contained a chemical, Tributyl Tin, which could disrupt human sex hormones - the Women's Environmental Network says that babies changed five times a day could be in contact with up to 3.6 times the World Health Organisation's estimated tolerable daily intake.
Disposables could also be contributing to a decline in male fertility. A recent study by doctors at the University of Kiel in Germany showed that the mean temperature of the scrotum in boys wearing disposable nappies was significantly higher than with cotton nappies - up to one degree centigrade above body temperature, impairing the normal mechanism that cools the testicles.