About 3 months ago I bought a compost bin so I could make my own organic matter for my veggie garden. I knew it would reduce the amount of rubbish we were throwing out but I had no idea it would be reduced by so much. We have gone from a full bin every week to having one bag of rubbish go out a week. Another reason for this dramatic decrease in waste may also be that I am more aware of what can be recycled. I take stickers off of price tags, take plastic bits and tape off of cardboard, I now even rinse the hard to rinse jars with Vegemite and peanut butter and recycle them instead of chucking them out. If it has a triangle, it goes in the recycle, if it breaks down and is not meat, it goes in the compost, I have a dog who eats anything that can’t be composted so that helps too. So our rubbish bin sits nearly empty every week and our recycle is overflowing every week and I get the warm fuzzies that I am no longer being wasteful!!!
The Cloth Nappy Post September 28, 2008
Everyone has their own reason for using either cloth or disposable and each side has their own argument. I have read so much conflicting information I have decided to do my own research on the subject. My research would be my own results and may or not reflect your own usage.
For the purpose of my study I will be doing the math on the cost of cloth vs disposables based on the Aldi brand Mamia for the disposables as they are my preferred brand for being cost effective and maintaining good quality. For the cloth nappies I will be calculating the single cost per nappy of the BumGenius brand as they are my preferred cloth nappy brand. I use throw away wipes regardless whether I use disposables or cloth and my preference is again the Aldi brand of Mamia. Since I have a boy and another on the way, I will go on the assumption that they will be toilet trained by 3, it could be anywhere from 2-3 but boys are notorious for late toilet training (Too busy playing in the mud I guess 
)
Anyway, I hope this mumble jumble makes sense without a chart because God knows I am no good at that sort of thing. I suppose I should have paid attention in math class.
Aldi nappies are $0.32 each – 6 nappies a day avg over 3 years = 6570 nappies $2102.20
Bum Genius nappies are $28.00 each – 8 nappies a day avg, washing every 3 days – It would be nice to have about 30 per child but you can get away with 24. 30 nappies = $840.00 (you can buy bulk packs of 24 for about $620.00, I am just counting the cost as building the stash slowly like I am for now.)
So far….. Disposables – $2102.20 MCN’s – $840.00
Factor in a second child and you probably only need another 14 MCN’s so $392.00 gets added there.
It now becomes Disposables – $4204.40 and MCN’s – $1232.00
How about a 3rd child? Disposables – $6306.60 – MCN’s $1232.00
(It is very likely the first child is toilet trained and you won’t need to buy anymore nappies, unless of course you have been bitten by the MCN bug which is very likely)
Maybe I will calculate the cost of cloth wipes vs disposable wipes. I for one am not too keen on the idea of using cloth wipes but I am migrating toward the idea.
Mamia wipes $2.99 per pack, roughly one pack a fortnight per child gets used. So that is $233.22 per child over the nappy using period.
Cloth wipes, you probably want about 30 per child in nappies at about $1.70 each (you can buy face washers cheaper that are just as effective) $51 per child
So far disposable wipes $233.22 and cloth wipes $51.00
2nd child – Disposable wipes $466.44 and cloth wipes $102.00
3rd child – Disposable wipes $699.66 and cloth wipes stay at $102.00
Now, I was going to factor in electricity usage and all that other jazz but my pregnant brain is far from capable of doing that kind of math and everyone has a different type of machine and is it really much of a difference to add on 2 washes extra a week? It would only be fair if I factored in the council rates for getting rid of the disposables and the fact they take anywhere from 100-500 years to break down depending on the expert you consult.
So here are the tallies for Cloth vs Disposable from birth to 3….
1st Child – Disposables $2335.42 – Cloth $891.00
2nd Child – Disposables $4670.84 – Cloth $1334.00
3rd Child – Disposables $7006.26 – Cloth $1334.00
Also a little known fact about nappies – Did you know it is against the law to dispose of human waste in your rubbish bin? So even if you are using disposables you have to toss the poo in the toilet anyway, so why not make the change?
I think we can clearly see the difference in monetary cost. If only we could clearly see the difference in environmental cost although I am sure we all have an idea what the long term impact is without spelling it out.
