Memorandum submitted by the Nappy Alliance
(Waste 40)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Nappy Alliance welcomes the Environment,
Food & Rural Affairs Committee's current Inquiry into the
government's recent revised Waste Strategy. The Waste Strategy
aims to put more emphasis on prevention and re-use, as well as
providing stronger incentives for businesses, local authorities
and individuals to reduce waste. The Alliance is pleased with
the government's overall ambition to break the link between economic
growth and waste growth and we particularly support the government's
target to halve the amount of household waste which is not re-used,
recycled or composted.
However, the Nappy Alliance is disappointed that
the Strategy, despite its high level of detail, does not include
any recommendations on how specifically to address the volume
of disposable nappies in household waste.
Reusable nappies represent a viable alternative to
disposable nappies, offering similar levels of convenience without
creating any landfill. By not incentivising young parents to use
real nappies, the Department appears to be missing an opportunity
to significantly reduce the 3-4% of household waste going to landfill
which consists of nappy waste.
In addition, the Government's plans to introduce
exemptions to variable charging for people with young children,
purely on the basis that they produce more nappy waste, appear
ill-considered. Whilst the Alliance is generally in favour of
variable charging and financial incentives which seek to encourage
waste minimisation and recycling, we believe that the proposed
exemption from variable charging for young parents included in
the Climate Change Bill, represents a missed opportunity for the
Government to allow local authorities to significantly address
what represents the biggest single-identifiable source of household
waste, ie disposable nappies.
REVISED WASTE
STRATEGY
1. The Nappy Alliance was established by
independent providers of real nappies to act as the trade body
for the commercial market of re-usable nappies, to promote their
use amongst new parents and to address the on-going issue of the
400,000 tonnes of disposable nappies which go to landfill in the
UK every year. The Alliance promotes awareness of the key benefits
of reusable nappies such as a wider consumer choice, a cheaper
option for parents than disposables and environmental benefits
and cost savings to waste disposal authorities.
2. The Nappy Alliance looks forward to working
with the Government in encouraging waste prevention and re-use,
as well as providing stronger incentives for businesses, local
authorities and individuals to reduce waste. We are encouraged
by the Government's recognition of the importance of reducing
waste, particularly given that currently two thirds of waste is
being diverted to landfill. Only Ireland and Greece in the EU
15[126]
send more waste to landfill than the UK. Therefore, if the government
is serious about lowering carbon emissions and reducing the threat
of climate change, it is clear that the current levels of waste
must be addressed.
3. Currently, nearly 3 billion nappies are
thrown away in the UK every year—8 million nappies a day—making
up 3-4% of all household waste. The Environment Agency estimated
that the decomposition timescale for some of the materials and
chemicals currently used in disposables is more than 500 years.
The paper-fluff and faeces should take approximately 100 and 10
years respectively to degrade[127].
In addition, landfill currently accounts for 38% of all UK methane
emissions, a greenhouse gas which is far more harmful in terms
of climate change than Carbon monoxide. It is clear that increasing
the uptake of reusable nappies could considerably drive down the
harmful methane emissions currently emitted in the UK.
4. We are disappointed and surprised that
despite the ambitious targets which the government set, its Waste
Strategy does not include recommendations on how to reduce the
amount of disposable nappies in household waste. Nappy waste currently
accounts for 3-4% of all household waste and constitutes the largest
identifiable category of household waste. With increasing levels
of recycling of other household waste streams, this percentage
is likely to increase even more. The current proposals for financial
incentives to increase recycling and waste-minimisation are therefore
a missed opportunity to encourage local authorities, manufacturers
and individuals to address the issue of disposable nappies.
5. Young parents are already increasingly
turning to reusable nappies as a way of reducing their contribution
to household waste and because they can save around £600
over a child's lifetime by using real nappies. The real nappy
market is continuing to grow at a steady rate, with all major
retailers now stocking at least one brand of real nappies.
6. Many local authorities across England
already successfully operate a number of local real nappy schemes
which seek to encourage the use of reusable nappies amongst households
with young children. The Alliance believes that local authorities
should be assisted with the funding and administering of re-usable
nappy initiatives, which are constructive and sustainable. It
is vital that local real nappy schemes continue to receive the
much needed financial support from local authorities, particularly
now that central funding through WRAP has dried up. In addition,
in local areas where real nappy schemes are in place, councils
should be encouraged to effectively promote their existence through
adequate council recycling guides.
7. The Alliance has previously welcomed
the Government's recognition of the problem and the positive benefits
for waste reduction that real nappy use brings. The work that
has been done by DEFRA to promote sustainable development in this
area is especially welcomed; in particular DEFRA's funding of
The Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), which for three
years funded the Real Nappy Campaign. The Campaign's aim to encourage
155,000 households to use real nappies by March 2007 was an important
step. However, despite the obvious benefits of real nappies on
the reduction of household waste going to landfill in those local
authorities which took part in the pilot schemes, the Department
has decided to discontinue funding the Campaign. We now look forward
to the government finalising arrangements for the proposed self-sustained
Real Nappy Campaign Ltd which will take over the role of WRAP
in promoting real nappies and which will be led by key stakeholders
such as WRAP, Women's Environmental Network and the Cornish Real
Nappy Project.
8. As stated earlier, young parents are
already increasingly moving towards real nappies as a means of
reducing their household waste and saving money. We are therefore
asking the Government, whilst reiterating the element of choice
when deciding about which nappy to use, to make use of this increasing
awareness about landfill issues amongst young parents to promote
real nappies and counterweight the massive marketing campaigns
of the disposable nappy industry.
9. The Nappy Alliance also supports the
government's plans to give local authorities the option to introduce
a form of revenue-neutral pay-as-you-throw schemes, particularly
if this coincides with an effective communication strategy aimed
at encouraging local households to recycle and prevent waste.
We look forward to working constructively with those local authorities
who will be involved in piloting variable charging schemes, as
per the provision in the Climate Change Bill that was recently
introduced into Parliament. The Alliance believe these pilots
represent a real opportunity to enable local authorities to take
an increased role in reducing the amount of waste that goes to
landfill, including the significant amount made up of disposable
nappy waste. We believe a key part of this will be incentivising
households to make use of environmentally-friendly and reusable
products including real nappies.
10. There are many case-studies elsewhere
in Europe which show that variable charging can lead to a sustained
decrease in the amount of household waste going to landfill. For
example, a recent study in Schweinfurt[128],
Germany, has shown that after the introduction of a form of variable
charging, the amount of disposable nappies which ended up in landfill
decreased by 33% as a result of parents switching to the use of
real nappies.
11. We welcome the government's acknowledgment
that incentive schemes need to take into account certain disadvantaged
groups. However, we are disappointed that the Climate Change Bill
has identified young families as a category which should receive
exemption or mitigation from variable charging schemes. The DEFRA
consultation which preceded the Bill, explicitly stated that this
is mainly because of young parents' dependency on disposable nappies.
The Bill as it stands will effectively encourage local authorities
to give up on the largest category of household waste, disposable
nappies. Given the anticipated increase in recycling rates of
other waste categories within household waste, the percentage
of disposable nappies in the total is likely to increase significantly.
12. The Alliance does not unequivocally
accept the notion that households with young children need to
be treated differently mainly because they throw away more disposable
nappies. There is a viable alternative to disposable nappies in
the form of reusable nappies which offer similar levels of convenience
as disposable nappies and which do not create any landfill. By
not incentivising young parents to use real nappies, the department
appears to be missing an opportunity to significantly reduce the
3-4% of household waste going to landfill which consists of nappy
waste.
13. The enormous cost of disposing the 3billion
nappies a year to landfill currently falls exclusively on local
authorities and therefore indirectly on local taxpayers. The government
urgently needs to start looking into ways in which manufacturers
of disposable nappies cover part of the cost of disposing their
products, by means of a levy or an environmental tax on disposable
nappies.
14. The Government states in its Waste Strategy
that energy should be recovered from waste wherever possible.
However, according to research, incinerating waste to produce
energy only makes sense for substances for which the incineration
value is at least 11 MJ/kg. To incinerate substances with a lower
incineration value, energy must be supplied; it yields no energy.
According to research the incineration value of incontinence and
nappy products amounts to approximately 7.5 MJ/kg[129].
Therefore, processing of nappy waste to produce energy is out
of the question.
15. Manufacturers of disposable nappies
have trumpeted recent technological improvements such as a reduction
of the average weight of an unsoiled disposable nappy by 40% and
claim this will greatly reduce the amount of nappy waste going
to landfill. In fact, given that most of the weight of disposable
nappies is constituted by baby waste (with the average weight
of an unsoiled nappy of 44.6g and the average weight of a soiled
nappy of around 150g[130]),
reducing the weight of an unsoiled disposable nappy will have
little effect once the soiled nappy ends up in landfill. In addition,
and whilst we welcome the fact that some manufacturers of disposable
nappies have increased the level of compostable materials in their
nappies, the fact remains that in an anaerobic environment such
as a landfill where the vast majority of disposable nappies will
end up, it will still take many decades for these materials to
decompose, whilst creating harmful methane emissions.
16. The Environment Agency which published
a Life Cycle Assessment on the environmental impact of both reusable
and disposable nappies in 2005, concluded that there was little
overall environmental difference between the two products. The
Environment Agency has since acknowledged that the study was seriously
flawed from the outset. A revised Life Cycle Assessment has been
commissioned and after considerable delay is now expected to be
published in December. This flawed assessment has obviously caused
considerable negative interest amongst certain media but the Nappy
Alliance expects this revised Report to reflect the overall environmental
benefits of reusable nappies much better than the original report
did. Regardless of the anticipated positive conclusion for real
nappies of the revised LCA report, certainly in terms of landfill
reduction, real nappies remain the only viable option to disposable
nappies.
CONCLUSION
We overall support the Government's aims to
put more emphasis on prevention and re-use, as well as providing
stronger incentives for businesses, local authorities and individuals
to reduce waste. However, the Nappy Alliance is surprised and
disappointed that the Government appears to close its eyes for
the increasing problem of nappy waste disposal and has missed
a real opportunity to address of what currently constitutes almost
4% of total household waste and is the single biggest identifiable
category of household waste. DEFRA needs to take urgent appropriate
action and start actively incentivising young parents to switch
to real nappies, positively encouraging local authorities to increase
the uptake of real nappies and considering making manufacturers
of disposables responsible for the cost of disposing of their
products in a more environmentally acceptable manner. These actions
would lower household waste, lower harmful carbon emissions and
help the government reach its ambitious targets set out in the
Waste Strategy
Mike Riley
Chair of the Nappy Alliance
November 2007
126 EU-15 refers to the 15 countries in the European
Union before the expansion on 1 May 2004. Back
127
Environment Agency, Lifecycle Assessment of Disposable and Reusable
Nappies in the UK, 2005. Back
128
Eunomia, Modelling the Impact of Household Charging for Waste
in England, p137. Back
129
Life Cycle Assessment of the Removal of Incontinence System Waste
from Public Establishments-Fraunhofer Study, Institute for Material
Flow and Logistics, Dortmund, 2001, p4. Back
130
Environment Agency, Life Cycle Assessment of Disposable Nappies
and Reusable Nappies in the UK, 2005, p22. Back
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