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New Zealand babies are doing their bit for the environment by wearing the latest in modern cloth nappies - the stylish and eco-friendly must-haves for our littlest citizens.
Gone are the days when cloth nappies required a degree in folding, serious skill with safety pins and a diploma in soaking.
The latest designs, made and sold by a number of New Zealand companies, feature soft wool and cotton, super-absorbent linings and funky designs.
This week is Real Nappy Week, which aims to increase the number of parents using the modern alternatives to disposables. A number of events are planned around the country.
Waitakere Hospital recently announced a scheme offering new parents the chance to try cloth nappies. It said parents could save thousands of dollars by using modern cloth nappies instead of disposables, and significantly reduce the amount of waste going to landfills.
The Ministry for the Environment says disposable nappies make up about 1.9 per cent of the 3.2 million tonnes of waste sent to New Zealand landfills each year - that's 60,800 tonnes of nappies a year or 166 tonnes a day.
But the ministry is keen to stress parents' right to choose and points out that cloth nappies still have an environmental impact, thanks to the water and energy used to wash them.
Rochelle Napier, director of Ecobubs and mother of three, said she decided to switch to cloth nappies when she playfully swatted her husband with a disposable and saw the chemical gel inside the nappy fly out.
"I thought, 'Is this what I'm putting on my baby's skin?' We saw a gap in the market for cloth nappies, [my sister] Rebecca made a prototype for the wool pocket nappy and we went from there," Mrs Napier said.
At the time she owned a day spa and sister Rebecca McClure was a chef. Like many cloth nappy companies in New Zealand, theirs started as a home-based business and now employs six professional seamstresses. She still uses disposables when out and about and still advocates them for use on newborn babies.
"I'm not averse to disposables sometimes, but for everyday use cloth ones are fantastic."
Mrs Napier said Ecobubs' wool nappies were more popular than ever and she estimated 12 per cent of New Zealand parents were using cloth nappies.
It costs about $400 for new parents to kit themselves out with the 12 cloth nappies they need, compared with about $3000 she estimated would be spent on disposables from babyhood to when the child was out of nappies.
"Besides the environmental impact and not sending so much waste to landfills, you're saving a lot of money and using something that's better for your baby," she said.
The wool pocket nappies were warm, comfortable, leak-proof, absorbent, breathable and chemical-free.
For more information on Real Nappy Week events see www.thenappynetwork.org.nz
Reducing the harm
Disposable nappy makers are making their own effort to reduce the environmental impact of disposable nappies.
Envirocomp and Huggies have joined forces to offer a nappy-composting service in Canterbury.
The Envirocomp website says it is the first commercial nappy composting facility in New Zealand, and "to our knowledge, the only one in the world able to compost all brands of disposable nappies, sanitary and incontinence products".
It says the results of a trial showed that the project would initially divert 2.5 tonnes of nappies and green-waste product a day from landfills and could potentially quadruple that to 3650 tonnes a year.
The numbers
* 1.9: the percentage of landfill waste that is disposable nappies
* 60,800: the tonnes of nappies that go to landfills each year
* 166: the tonnes of nappies that go to landfills each day
