Date published: 2006/04/27
The BBC says:
Every day UK parents bin eight million nappies, a waste mountain Real Nappy Week aims to reduce. Disposables may be an eco nightmare, but it's easy to forget how this simple invention helped liberate women from the home.
Many parents probably don't have existential crises about what kind of nappies to use. Most will opt for those which seem comfortable, don't cause too much of a dent in the bank balance, and allow their little ones to run around without a care in the world.
Yet behind the scenes, a war of words is brewing - a clash between activist parents who think it's irresponsible to use disposable nappies because they damage the environment, and those who praise disposables for allowing them to spend less time cleaning soiled children and more time on work, leisure and the brighter side of parenting.
Green-leaning campaigners encourage parents to use what they call "real nappies", which go in the washing machine, rather than the bin.
"They save waste and can save parents money," says Elizabeth Hartigan, of the Women's Environment Network (WEN), organisers of Real Nappy Week. She used washable nappies on her three children, and says they are the best "eco and economic option". Nor are pins an issue, having been replaced by poppers and Velcro.
Yet many mums and dads resist pressure to go washable - not because they are indifferent to the environment, but because they see disposables as a valuable invention that has freed up women's time in particular.
How quaint of the BBC to label the anti-disposable-nappy brigade as "activist", you could also call them interfering control freaks. This is just another example of the hysterical middle class busy bodies trying to denigrate parents, and in particular this can easily be seen as just another attack on working mothers. (It would be interesting to see if there is a reasonable correlation between households that use disposable nappies and households where both parents work outside the house.) People who claim that washing nappies "saves money" are just missing the point completely (even assuming it is a correct claim). People are willing to pay more for convenience, just witness the success of mobile phones (where the call charges are much higher than for fixed lines).
Of course you could easily argue that parents who use disposable nappies should pay for the waste they create. But everybody should pay for all the waste they create. (For example, households should not pay a fixed waste collection fee as now, but one based on how much waste they dispose, e.g. based on weight.) But even if parents paid for the disposal of nappies, you can guarantee that the anti-disposable-nappy brigade would not be satisfied, they would still complain. (Motorists already pay a carbon tax way over the odds, but so-called environmentalists still complain about this. There are some people in life who have nothing better to do than complain about the actions of others.)
And focussing on nappies in this way misses the bigger picture. By far and away the most environmentally damaging aspect of children is not the use of disposable nappies but the creation of the children in the first place, since that leads to a lifetime of environmental degradation (and onto the next generation after that, etc.). But nobody ever mentions this, indeed the opposite is encouraged by most governments of the world (and also the "activists" and so-called environmentalists). We should not so much be taxing nappies as taxing birth.
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