How many cloth nappies do I need?
This is, without a doubt, the most common question that parents wanting to use cloth nappies, ask us.
Reasons to use cloth nappies
First of all, it is important that you ask yourself what are your reasons for using cloth, for most parents, their reasons are within these three categories:
- Avoiding contact of baby skin to chemicals in disposable nappies;
- Desire to reduce the amount of waste to landfill;
- Savings on the cost of disposable nappies
Chemicals
For instance, if you don’t want any chemicals in close contact with your baby’s delicate skin, then the answer is straight forward, you need at least 15 nappies to use cloth nappies full time.
Waste to landfill
If your motivation is the amount of waste sent to landfills, imagine that, just for your own baby, 5500 nappies produce around a ton of waste and they take an estimated 450 to 500 years to degrade while polluting the air and the soil.
Although we would love to see everyone using cloth nappies on a full-time basis, we also recognise the value of using cloth nappies on a part-time basis as a strategy to reduce the amount of waste generated by dirty nappies.
To build your stash bit by bit, we normally said that you need from 2 to 30 nappies! It sounds like a huge range isn’t it? This difference is because you could use one nappy a day or use nappies on a full-time basis.
I have done some sums for you to see how many disposable nappies you will be able to save from going to landfill, depending on the size of your stash.
To begin let’s use the official data from the NHS. The NHS calculated that the average age for a baby to be potty trained in the UK 2.5 years, this totals to 912.5 days
Therefore:
- With 2 nappies you could use 1 nappy a day to save at least 900 disposable nappies to a landfill;
- With 6 nappies you could use 3 nappies a day to save around 2700 disposable nappies to a landfill;
- With 15 nappies you could use 6-7 nappies a day to save 5400-5500 nappies to a landfill and
Even more!
With 30 nappies you will save the same number of nappies than with 15, but in addition:
- You will never run out of nappies;
- Your nappies will be kept in better condition as you will reduce the rate of usage per nappy;
- Your nappies will be in good condition for a second baby and even for a third baby and
- You will get better value for their resale of your nappies.
Cost of the cloth nappies
Are you wondering by now, if you have to spend a fortune in 30 nappies?
According to the website What Price in the UK, “…the total cost of keeping a baby in nappies for the first two years is estimated to be around £800”
We need to add another 6 months, so using the cost of the nappies from 18 to 24 months they present on this website I will add £125.00. This makes the total expenditure of disposable nappies of around £925.00 for 2.5 years.
Cost of disposable vs Reusable
Let’s check how this compares with 30 nappies
16 Ecopipo G3 Pocket nappy @ 13.99 ea. = £223.84
4 Ecobebé AI2 nappies @ 12.99 ea.= £51.96
4 Ecobebé spare inserts @ 4.25 ea. = £17.00. This combination of Ecobebé and spare inserts give a total of 8 Ecobebé nappies.
6 Ecopipo Adjustable night nappies @14.49 ea. = 86.94
2 wraps to waterproof the adjustable night nappies @ £10.49 ea. = £20.98
The total cost of 30 nappies = £400.72
How much will you save?
£925.00, the average cost for disposables for one baby – £400.00, the cost of your 30 nappies = £525.00 the savings for one baby.
More good news!
As 30 nappies will have less wear and tear, you can use them for a second baby adding to the saves:
£525.00 (Saving from baby 1) plus £925.00 (nappies for baby 2) = £1450.00 of total saving when 30 nappies are used in two babies.
In conclusion, whatever is your motivation and whatever number of nappies you use, will always be a win-win situation, for your baby’s skin health, for your pocket, and for the health and well being of the only planet we have!
If you need further information on how to start your journey, please remember we are only one click away!! You can contact us by email on info@ecopipo.co.uk or ecopipouk@gmail.com
We hope to hear from you soon!
In the meantime have a nappy day!
Laura, Ecopipo UK