Topic: Nappies

[Good Gourd 2]

I have just read in one of the gardenining papers that you can use nappies in containers.  Has anyone else heard of this and does it work.  All so what about damage to the enviroment  i.e how long do they take to  rot.

[asbean]

Not used ones, I hope  :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\ :-\

[Robert_Brenchley]

Why not? As long as the nappies don't do anything nasty, it's just a bit of added organic matter.

[Deb P]

i'm just wondering if they mean using disposable nappies, as the gel that absorbs the urine in between the linings is just like water retaining gel? ???

[flossy]

  Oh Dear,

  Got a prob here - We have foxes that visit our allotment, and others nearby apparently.

  We get regular donations of used nappies, soiled, and though we are an organic site -- 
   we aint that organic !!!  >:(

  I can't bring myself to put them in my compost bin !  They just rip them apart - must be the smell ??

  they get bagged and put in the groundfill, they can rot away there !!

  Floss xxx

[GrannieAnnie]

Ewwww :o used nappies in a veg. garden.
Can't stand the thought of eating a radish or anything raw from there. Sorry.

[caroline7758]

Don't they have plastic in them?

[Tyke]

mmmm..... usual advice from books and websites is never to compost human faeces. It will attract vermin and is full of bacteria (largely due to most people's consumption of meat. Regular household compost heaps or bins will not get hot enough to kill all these germs off. There are special bins and services that can compost them safely.

I reckon they might have meant that you can compost clean cotton nappies as cotton can be composted over time.

[flossy]

  
  Hi Grannie Annie,

  Don't be sorry - really, all is kept away from foxes by enclosing each bed in chicken wire - it works as
  they find the wire too floppy and risky to jump.
  Doesnt stop them bringing contributions to the other areas - mostly kiddies small toys, they must get left out in the gardens.
  Don't know what the answer is -  we don't want them harmed, but don't want the nappies !

  Sorry, I'm off thread,

  Floss xxx

[Larkshall]

mmmm.....
I reckon they might have meant that you can compost clean cotton nappies as cotton can be composted over time.

Why would you be composting CLEAN nappies, that's not ecologically good. Cutting down trees to make paper to make nappies then wasting them. Come on, use your brains. If they are cotton nappies (woven) then they should be washed and used as wiper rags.

If you want to make compost, why not shred the masses of junk mail you get and compost that, I do.

[Baccy Man]

The average nappy is 30% plastic so you would need to sift out any remainng plastic from your finished compost.

Dioxin which is a byproduct of the paper bleaching process is found in low levels in all nappies which use chlorine bleached paper. In large quantities this could cause environmental problems but it is likely to degrade before becoming a problem in your compost heap.

Tributyl tin (TBT) is a compound of carbon, hydrogen and tin  used as a stabiliser is the plastics in some (not all) brands of nappies. It is an endocrine disruptor & is considered to be a highly toxic environmental pollutant.

The absorbent chemical ued in them is sodium polyacrylate which is believed to be non toxic when combined with water (although it has been suggested that it could be carcinogenic but no definitive answer has been reached yet). It is considered to be a stable compound which will break down very slowly & can potentially absorb 400-800 times it's weight in water. Sodium polyacrylate is already widely used in agriculture because or its water retention properties. Finished compost containing sodium polyacrylate will hold roughly 4 times as  much water as regular compost & retain that water significantly longer.

The faecal material in a used nappy is relatively safe because of a baby's diet there will only be low levels of bacteria & pathogens in there which will easily be destroyed in the composting process particularly so if placed in a vermicomposting system. There is plenty of evidence which clearly demonstrates that redworms significantly reduce the levels of pathogens & coliform bacteria in human faecal material to well below what is considered to be safe levels.

Of course if you used econappies these are designed to be composted. They do contain less sodium polyacrylate so the water retention properties would be somewhat reduced but you eliminate the problems with plastics & chemicals.
Unfortunately eco nappies are often more expensive.
http://www.naturebotts.co.uk/shop/nappies/moltex_oko_disposables/info.htm

[Kea]

You're forgetting that babies are vaccinated and at least one of the vaccines, polio, is live. If you haven't been vaccinated against Polio and you handle the nappy of a baby vaccinated within the last 6 weeks you risk catching polio. Grandparents beware it's not just the nappy that can infect you, I say grandparents because they are more likely than anyone else to not have been vaccinated.

[Tyke]

mmmm.....
I reckon they might have meant that you can compost clean cotton nappies as cotton can be composted over time.

Why would you be composting CLEAN nappies, that's not ecologically good. Cutting down trees to make paper to make nappies then wasting them. Come on, use your brains. If they are cotton nappies (woven) then they should be washed and used as wiper rags.

I have to say that i couldn't work out why you would want to compost cotton nappies either. If they are in such a bad state that the best thing to do is to compost them, then you probably shouldn't have been using them as a nappy for quite some time - lol!

It seems that the eco-nappies are designed to be quickly composted, but not in a regular compost heap/bin - It has to be a wormery or a municipal site.

Seems some are composting disposable ones big time!http://www.stuff.co.nz/4454213a7694.html

[Kea]

I'm surprised this idea came from NZ where it is so much easier to use cloth nappies than it is here. In case you're wondering what i mean is that people usually have a separate laundry room in their house...so no nappies in buckets hanging around the Bathroom/kitchen. Plus it's easier to get them dry outside all year round and usually more room inside if needed (in the laundry room mentioned earlier). And here I'm speaking from first hand experience my first baby was born in NZ and I used cloth nappies 99% of the time (the disposable ones sold in NZ at the time didn't work well anyway).
When I moved to the UK and had the second child i found cloth nappies just too difficult to use (one reason was actually No. 2 child wriggled too much and hated nappy changing with a passion!) the other reason was there was nowhere to put the buckets of nappies while they soaked, then for a big chunk of the year (800 ft above sea level in Scotland) they just wouldn't dry outside, no room to dry them inside so they required a dryer, so i mainly used disposables in the end.

I think people using clean nappies are using them for their  water retaining ability...it works out cheaper than the crystals.

I use the old cloth nappies for all sorts of things....mainly handtowels and to mop up spills etc.

[Good Gourd 2]

Thank you Kea,  I was not thinking of composting them just for the water retaining properties,as you said, the only worry was when I empty the hanging baskets etc., it would mean more for the landfill sites. And of course I would use new ones, thought I might visit the  99p shop to see if they have any cheapy ones.   :D

[Kea]

I got those gel slices a couple of years ago and I have reused them this year and hope to reuse them again. So if you use nappy filling why not just recycle it by using it again. You could put it in old tights or something so it's easy to retrieve at the end of the growing season, then it wouldn't be going into landfill.

[moonbells]

considering how expensive a box of water-retaining gel is, perhaps an unused disposable nappy would be a cheaper alternative, eg for putting in the base of hanging baskets!!!!

moonbells (yes I use eco-disposables for my son)