Reusable nappies star of Baby Show
It’s back to the future at the Baby Show today with the not-so-quaint idea of reusable, eco-friendly nappies getting a big push.
The show at Auckland’s ASB Showgrounds is hosting stalls and speakers advocating environmentally wise parenting, encouraging mums and dads to recycle nappies — just as their parents did.
Kate Meads, also known as The Nappy Lady, will speak at the event, aiming to educate parents and parents-to-be about waste reduction.
According to a report on the New Zealand Waste Disposal Levy, conducted by research and consulting company Eunomia, nappies and sanitary waste made up about 10 per cent of kerbside waste sent to landfill.
Auckland woman Kate Le Heron is an advocate of the eco-friendly nappy option — the 30-year-old switched to reusables two or three months after her daughter Eleanor was born.
As a first-time mum, she decided to give herself a bit of “leeway” into the beginning of
I was a little bit nervous about it, but it’s been really easy and they clean up really well. Kate Le Heron
motherhood — so started off using disposable nappies.
But she’d get a “pang of guilt” each time she took a load full of nappies out to the trash. This helped motivate her to make the switch.
“It wasn’t too much of a drama, really,” she said.
“I was a little bit nervous about it, but it’s been really easy and they clean up really well,” she said.
The reusables look slightly bulkier, she said, but an upside was that this provided more cushioning, should little Eleanor topple over.
She also enjoyed knowing she was minimising waste going into landfill.
Jess and James Fletcher’s reusable nappy company Fudgey Pants will have a stall at the show. Their business, which launched two years ago, started when son Archibald was a toddler. The couple were keen to use cloth nappies but found many of the products unreliable.
“We thought, well we could probably design something that fits better, and works better for us with quality material,” Jess Fletcher said.
Working with a manufacturer they came up with a design featuring a waterproof outer shell atop a micro-suede insert to keep the baby dry.
The washable part of the nappy fits in the shell.
Business had started to increase “dramatically” in recent months, as people made more effort to reduce their waste, she said.
And there was a big saving from reusable nappies — Fletcher said up to $4000 per child could be saved by opting out of disposables.