Page 2520 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 31 July 2019
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Insert new paragraphs (6)(e) to (g):
“(e) using midwives, MACH nurses, disability support and aged care workers and ACT Government directorates to assist with education and promotion of these reusable products;
(f) consider mechanisms to support low-income households to convert to use of environmentally-friendly types of nappies and sanitary and continence products; and/or
(g) consider mechanisms to support early childhood educators to convert to use of environmentally-friendly types of nappies; and”.
I am pleased to agree with virtually everything preceding speakers have said. It is interesting that we have taken different approaches to this based on whether it is primarily a women’s issues or an environmental issue, and of course they are both.
This is a really important issue because sanitary pads, disposables and continence pads are all basically a sandwich of inorganic and organic materials, we could say that none of us is going with the concept of recycling them, but we need to think of better ways to deal with them.
At the risk of sounding old fashioned—I am even older than Ms Lawder—when I had a baby this was not a matter of conversation and I was very lucky that each side of the family gave me three dozen nappies. That was a standard sort of thing at the time. They are great; they last for a very long time, and if you are lucky enough to have any left over when the baby is out of nappies they are incredibly useful. People kept on pinching them to do things with them.
The new cloth nappies are more convenient, and certainly the washing machines and dryers are. The new cloth nappies have velcro so you do not have to wear nappy pins anymore. Actually, I remember not so much wearing the nappy pins but always going around with a nappy on my shoulder to wipe up the messes. Today’s nappies are tailored so babies in cloth nappies can wear the same clothing as babies in disposable nappies.
I have a toddler grandson and his mum uses cloth nappies. She is fortunate enough to have a washing machine and a dryer very close to the change table and it is really no work. The dryer and washing machine are both solar powered; they managed to put in an awful lot of PVs. So for her using cloth nappies is a lot less hassle than disposables would be. With disposable she has to go to the shops and buy them and then she has to dispose of them. Of course, what she is doing is a lot cheaper once you have bought them. I also point out that nappies last very well and if you want to save some money, Gumtree—and probably eBay—has a very good market in second-hand modern cloth nappies.
Ms Lawder raised the big question of what is the most environmentally sound when you take it all into account. Whether they are single use or cloth, be they sanitary products, continence products or nappies, they all have environmental impacts. The real question is, which creates the biggest. The production of disposable nappies uses a lot of resources, I have not done extensive fact-checking on this and my numbers are
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