Philippa Stevenson: (Non) disposables a rash choice

COMMENT

Confession: I've been a recycling backslider.

Remember when plastic milk bottles came in and to blunt opposition to them the dairy company set up collection points at schools for the empties? I dutifully trekked along with my bottles, even did a bit of sorting after others had done drive-by dumps of that sin - mixed plastics.

Then it all went pear-shaped and most schools got out of it. I live in the country and we didn't have any kerbside pick-ups. (We now have paper and glass collections.)

I still collected my plastic bottles but one day I drove all over town and couldn't find a recycler. It seemed daft to burn precious fossil fuels only to have to dump my bottles so I went back to putting them out with the rubbish.

Recently, after years of bulging rubbish bags, I found a place within a reasonable distance to recycle my bottles so I'm back collecting.

I was motivated by doing a test to see what my "footprint" on the planet was. It was a good deal bigger than my size 6 shoes. Apparently, if everyone had my consumption we'd need 6.1 planets to cater for us all.

While I am supported by something like 10.9ha the world has available only 1.8 "globally productive hectares" per person. I'm shoving aside five other people. That's a bit sobering. (The New Zealand average is 8.7ha.)

Then, as I wrote last week, I paid a call on Hamilton's Russell Recycling and was shocked to find the huge amount of useable goods that many people believe are fit only for burial.

After hunting up facts on waste my shock has only grown. I have to do better. We have to do better or risk forcing our children's children to live atop our rubbish, cold, hungry and in the dark.

A sorry sample: It takes 26 litres of crude oil to make one car tyre. Toothbrushes represent 45 million kilograms of plastic waste each year. Nine tonnes of waste are generated to create a 2.3kg laptop computer.

And it hangs around: It takes 2.5 months for paper to decompose, five years for a milk carton, up to 12 years for a cigarette butt, up to 20 years for a plastic bag and styrofoam lives forever.

Disposable nappies - on which discussion has been prompted lately by Green Party MP and waste-free spokesman Mike Ward - take 75 years to decay.

There may be dispute about some of those timespans but a year or two here or there is immaterial. Our waste is material and we add to it by the hour.

When Ward made his point about the horrendous volumes of nappies piling up at landfills, anyone sympathetic to his view risked being branded as an out-of-touch oldie, indifferent to the plight of busy young families.

But what are we doing using a significant amount of energy to make one disposable nappy when the same amount would wash 200 cloth nappies? What are we doing turning a blind eye to the fact that disposables are not very disposable at all? They are just piling up somewhere we can't see them - for at least 75 more years.

No doubt like many a grandparent I was surprised to find that my son had no intention of using anything but disposables on his daughter. A lively discussion followed about costs and convenience. It was, of course, ultimately his choice.

But I still do not buy the argument that harried young families don't have the time to be dealing with cloth nappies. Not when just a generation ago people were no less harried and found little difficulty using cloth nappies.

Once disposable nappies were for convenience. Now, they are marketed as essential and whole supermarket aisles and entire shops are devoted to selling them. That level of commerce, supported by cutesy advertisements, is driven by profits, not a desire to keep baby bums dry or to give parents more time.

In Britain, where eight million nappies are thrown away each day, a campaign, Real Nappy Week, is in its eighth year of highlighting the environmental impact of disposable nappies and informing parents about modern, shaped and fitted cloth nappies and laundry services.

With an eye to overflowing landfills, the British Government has identified the prevention of nappy waste as one of two initial strands to spearhead waste reduction.

It is just one of many places some of us could start making our footprints smaller. There are many more to choose from.

Who wants to be confessing they could have done better after they've been buried in rubbish?

* Email Philippa Stevenson

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