Can’t decide whether to use cloth nappies on your little one?
We’ve narrowed down our favourite reasons to switch!
1. Saves you money
The initial investment soon pays off.
Disposable nappies cost parents an average of €2,000 per child until potty training (usually completed around 2.5 years of age). That’s literally throwing money in the bin every day.
A full set of 24 PICO TANGO reusable nappies, including 24 boosters, plus 2 large wet bags, plus the washing costs, costs €652.70 in total. That’s 3 times less.
You save €1,300 per child.
2. Saves you time
Disposables often require frequent visits to the supermarket or local store. When the baby poops in disposables, you try to contain it all in the nappy, wrapping it up as tightly as possible, throw it in the bin and close the lid and don´t think about it anymore, right? Wrong. It stinks. It stinks a lot. It continues to stink until you can´t bare the smell of poo in the room and put it outdoors. So be prepared to spend time putting your baby’s dirty nappies outside every other day at least.
With PICO TANGO All-in-One reusable nappies, on the contrary, you dispose the poo into the toilet (easy to remove with one hit), which prevents odors from the nappy bin until they’re washed. What if the poo is runny and too messy to dispose it into the toilet? Easy – grab a bit of toilet paper and remove the excess, the rest goes directly to the washing machine; it will do the rest – they come out clean.
3. Baby’s health
Have you ever considered what disposable diapers are made of? How did they get to be so white? How do they manage to absorb so much?
Disposables contain hazardous ingredients that may include dioxins and furans, pesticide and herbicides residues, synthetic fragrances (butylphenyl methylpropional, hydroxyisohexyl 3-cyclohexene carboxaldehyde), certain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and PCB. Babies with sensitive skin may develop allergies to these ingredients, which results in a skin rash.
France’s ANSES agency tested best-selling brands of disposable nappies and found 38 “very severe hazard” chemicals in nappies sold throughout Europe. Most of the chemicals disrupt hormones, the officials say, a property that means they have no safe exposure level.
In contrast, PICO TANGO reusable nappies have Tencel ™, and organic cotton, which are naturally hypoallergenic, against your baby’s delicate intimate area, representing a safe and responsible alternative to your child’s health.
4. Waste reduction
Due to its complex synthetic composition together with biological material, recycling disposable nappies is not financially viable. They take hundreds of years to decompose. In 2017, it was estimated that 6.7 million tonnes of disposable nappies waste was generated in the EU-28, which typically end up in landfills (87%) or are incinerated (13%).
Considering 6 nappy changes per day as a minimum (a newborn can use 12 a day), that’s about 6,300 nappies in 2.5 years, equalling over 1.2 tonnes of waste.
When you choose disposables, you are spending your money contributing to landfills. And while it may seem like the amount of water and electricity used to care for cloth is also bad for the environment, once you understand that in the majority of time they can be washed together with the other household clothes, the impact is minimal in comparison.
5. Less CO2 emissions
Disposable nappies result in a carbon footprint approximately 500 kg of CO2 equivalents used over 2.5 years a child is tipically in nappies. Swaping to reusables results in a reduction of 40%, equivalent to some 220 kg of CO2, over the 2.5 years. This reduction is possible by washing nappies in a fuller load, outdoor line drying all the time, washing up to 60ºC and reusing nappies with a second child.
6. Less crude dependency
It takes over 1,500 litres of crude oil to produce enough disposable nappies for a baby until they become potty trained at 2.5 years.
7. Less resource use
Single-use baby nappies use 20 times more land for production of raw materials and require 3 times more energy to make than cloth nappies.