ZERO WASTE PARENTING TIPS LIFESTYLE ESSAY words and photography by Emma Ross
NAPPIES In an ideal world, we would have used reusable nappies from Day 1, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 12 months a year and I would have had my eldest, Jack potty-trained far earlier – but that’s just not the world we personally live in. At nursery I felt awkward asking them to use cloth nappies which I know is silly and it may well be something I look in to changing once my youngest son starts. Jack also usually spends 1 day a week with my mother in law and expecting her to use reusable nappies just feels slightly too much at this stage. We also do a fair bit of travelling and having to worry about washing nappies as well as all the extra challenges that come with traveling with kids is just one thing too much. And then there’s the nights… SO, where does that leave us? For all the above instances, we use Kit and Kin nappies which are super impressive as almost every element biodegrades within 3-6 years, including the front panel, tapes, anti-leak barriers and packaging. As far as I’m aware there is no nappy yet on the market which is 100% biodegradable. The rest of the time (so when the kids are with us, during the day, not at nursery, and we’re not travelling – most of the time), we use reusable nappies. I’ve done a fair bit of experimenting and whilst with Jack we used gNappies which are fab in many ways, I found that once poop got bigger they just didn’t contain it. We then switched to the Real Easy Nappy which I could not be happier with.
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