Real Nappy Week has been around since 1996 and is now organised by Go Real to bring reusable nappies into the public eye and promote their benefits – not just for your baby but for the planet too! This year it’s taking place next week – 20th – 26th April.

So what makes reusable nappies so good that Go Real want to shout about them? An estimated 813, 200 babies are born in England and Wales every year, this means around 3 billion disposable nappies – equating to 355,000 tonnes of waste – are used and sent to landfill every year. Now just think, even if every baby wore just one cloth nappy a day, 813,200 nappies wouldn’t be going to landfill every year! There are also reports suggesting that a 40% carbon saving can be made from using reusable nappies rather than disposables.

Obviously the most important point is how reusable nappies will benefit your baby, after all their wellbeing is top priority. The main benefit is that there are no chemicals present in the nappies, they are simply made of a cloth material that has not been bleached so the skin will not come into contact with any kind of chemicals. Cloth nappies are also much softer and therefore more comfortable for your baby to wear.

There’s also the financial savings you can make with reusable nappies. According to Go Real, babies will need around 2,000 nappy changes each year, and with potty training averaging at two and a half years that’s almost 5,000 nappies! The average cost per disposable nappy is 16p, and this amounts to parents in England and Wales spending approximately half a billion pounds on disposable nappies every year! Go Real has done some research and found that parents can save between £150 and £1000 over the lifetime of using nappies which is a huge saving!

gNappies

We know the transition to reusable nappies can be difficult, after all disposable nappies have been the norm for so long it seems odd to use washable nappies – when really there’s nothing odd about it at all. If you’re still not so sure though let me introduce you to gNappies which gives you the best of both worlds. Simply choose a nappy cover and use either biodegradable or washable nappy inserts. These are great to get you started towards using reusable nappies for good, and are much better for the environment than regular disposable nappies. The best thing about gNappies disposable inserts is that you can add the wet ones to your compost heap where they will degrade in 50-150 days (while they will break down faster than regular nappies in a rubbish heap, nothing truly biodegrades in a landfill). You also have the option of using washable inserts which are much easier than washing the whole nappy every time, and you can use flushable liners with the inserts to capture mess while the wetness passes through to be absorbed by the cloth insert.