Dispose of disposables: nappy service

Pamela Rees is on a mission! She is passionate about reducing the number of disposable nappies that go to landfill and in New Zealand that means more than one million per week. The Nappy Godmother, Pamela's business, collects, cleans and reuses nearly 1000 nappies per week, which adds up to 52,000 fewer disposable nappies in landfill each year. It's a start.
The Nappy Godmother business began in Marton last year and is now based in Palmerston North. Pam travels to Whanganui two days a week to pick up used nappies and deliver clean ones.
While The Nappy Godmother's service is aimed at families its main customers at the moment are day-care centres, with another one beginning soon. Pam believes that the staff at the day-care centres will educate and encourage families to choose recyclable nappies for home.
Subscribing to reuseable nappies is cost-effective for families when parents' time is factored in. A $75 deposit reserves 60 nappies for each specific family, and a weekly cost guarantees a twice weekly pickup and nappy-liners provided. This may be slightly more than disposables, but the benefits far outweigh this.
Nappies come pre-folded and consist of two layers of microfibre with bamboo fabric on the outside. The inside layer is waterproof and has a pocket to put a single or double liner in. Biodegradable liners, soft on babies' bottoms, can be thrown out so no rinsing or scraping is required. Used nappies are put straight into a sealed nappy bucket for collection. The Nappy Godmother uses commercial washing machines and driers - and also sunshine "which is still the best bleacher, cleaner and freshener".
Pam believes there is a serious need for education around the huge environmental cost of dumping disposable nappies in the landfill. They are highly toxic and take an unknown number of years to biodegrade. Pam wonders if families putting disposable nappies in a rubbish bag and parking it outside the gate make it "someone else's problem". She struggles to understand how so many families seemingly do not care about their effect on the environment when they consider how many years their babies are in nappies.
One of the barriers to families changing over to reuseable nappies is that leading baby-related activities and agencies in our communities are funded by well-known international disposable nappy producers. This creates a conflict of financial interest and prevents Pam introducing reuseable nappies to these organisations and the families that use their services.
"Peoples' perceptions need changing - getting a perfect fit for each baby is easily done during a one-on-one demonstration. Everything is done for our customers really," says Pam.
Pam has her heart in this business though and enjoys getting up and going to work each day. "The Nappy Godmother customers rave about our service - they love every part of it." One happy customer told Pamela she loves it that The Nappy Godmother took all the decision-making out of getting reusable nappies (as there is a lot of choice in the market). Pam considers a really important part of the service is giving Mums their time back. "We take the dirty work out of the whole cloth nappy thing." [Editors' note: While doing something positive to care for the environment!]