• In a household with one baby, disposables will make up 50% of total household waste.

• Around a million nappies are landfilled every day in New Zealand. (Based on 145,000 children under two and half in NZ using 6-7 disposables per day).

• Dealing with nappy waste costs individual local authorities tens of thousands of dollars a year and the decomposing material in landfill creates methane gas a major contributor to global warming.

• A baby will need up to 6000 nappy changes for the first two and half years. At 50c per nappy then that is $3000 thrown into landfill, excluding the refuse cost.

• It takes one full cup of crude oil to make the plastic for each disposable nappy.

• It takes 4.5 trees to make the pulp used in disposable nappies for one baby over 2 1/2 years (ie: 1.3 million trees for NZ babies)

• Disposable nappies use 3.5 times more energy, 8 times more non-renewable raw materials, 90 times more renewable materials than washable nappies. It takes as much energy to produce one throwaway nappy as it does to wash a cloth nappy 200 times.

(source www.zerowaste.co.nz)