Allualjah I have saved...
An 9ft piece of Bannister rail from the furnace. Got it out of the skip actually.
Why do people turf this stuff out when alls it needs is some nitromors or heat gun on it to bring it back to life. ;-)
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Dunno, but when we moved in here there was an awful pine handrail held up on spindly metal brackets screwed to a plank screwed to the wall. I replaced it with a bit of mahogany shaped to match the bit on the other side[1] for the princely sum of £18. Can't think why the housing association that had previously owned the place didn't do that - it must have cost them about the same and apart from looking horrid wasn't very secure.
[1] We need hand rails both sides 'cos the wife's wobbly.
Isn't pine the more eco-friendly option?
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Quite probably but not if it's so badly implemented as to be unsafe and has to be redone.
Not necessarily. Certainly in outdoor applications hardwood will last several times longer, saving harvesting, transport and fitting costs.
Reminds me of a dreadful interview on the radio a couple of months back when a guy from a Council (worried about his landfill tax I think) was arguing that Terry Nappies were far better for the environment than disposables. Neglecting the water and energy to wash and dry, wear and tear on the washing machine, chlorine steriliser down the drains, not to mention the time. You have to do the sums properly of course, there are energy and water costs in making disposables. But of course if we put in correct environmental charges then we would be doing the right thing by buying on price and wouldn't need all these campaigns.
I don't know if the guy from the Council was aware of all the factors involved, but his conclusion was correct. The environmental impact of disposables is far greater than that of cloth nappies. Independent studies have found that the manufacture, use and disposal of disposable nappies uses 3.5 times more energy, 8 times more non- renewable raw materials, 90 times more renewable material and 2.3 times more wastewater (the manufacture of disposable nappies uses a great deal of water) and produces 60 times more solid waste than cloth nappies. Disposable nappies also require between 4 and 30 times more land for growing natural materials than cloth nappies.
The only studies which have found that cloth and disposable nappies are close to equal in environmental terms were done by disposable nappy manufacturers and considered the environmental impact *only* during the usage phase - i.e. they completely ignored the impact of manufacturing and disposal, which are, of course, where the bulk of the environmental impact of disposable nappies lie.
As far as time involved in washing nappies goes - I'd estimate that it's less than fifteen minutes a week, including carrying them to the washing-machine and starting the wash, hanging them out to dry and bringing them in and folding them.
Who by?
The people who seem to have originally made the statements you quoted (and which are repeated frequently on commercial sites selling cloth nappies) appear to be a commercial "environmental consultancy" with very few staff and Directors who are politically active in the Green Party. They sell the method (ecological footprinting) the report follows. The quotes refer to a single "study" carried out in 1998. Hardly "independent" or studies in the plural.
One of the directors is quoted as saying about a book they wrote "The first point about this book is the authors? confession that their priority is not the truth, nor accurately measuring the devastation of the Earth?s life support system, but winning public approval,"..."The authors seem proud to have built this anthropocentric bias into their work. They seem to be suggesting that in order to persuade people they are wrecking the Earth?s life support system, it is necessary to treat them like livestock..."
Independent?
Incidentally I see Bjorn Lomborg is going to be on an R4 series on iconoclasts.
And I don't believe KVL has raised kids on both systems, including living through a wet winter in a modest town house where "hanging out to dry" was not an option. Far less a council high rise flat like many have to.
We have 15 month twins, we do a wash once, sometimes twice, a day, if we used reusables we would need to do another load at least and deal with the extra effort and resources used.
We never even tried reusables because of the number of people we know who tried and gave up. We did try compostable nappies but they weren't much good and were more expensive.
I do wonder if the great environmental nappy debate has been promoted so much because certain people twigged that new parents are "susceptible" to the environmental propaganda - worrying about the legacy to our offspring.
Whilst using disposables obviously has an environmental imapct, as everything, I don't see it anywhere near as big a problem as say uneccesary packaging, uneccesary journeys in innefficient vehicles or infact the cult of conspicous consumption.
H
Our twins (now aproaching 21) made us think of disposables. We costed them out, together with terries (which we had aready used with the older ones) and found, even with factoring in an extra washing machine, it was cheaper using terries. We still have the benefit of the two washing machines, and the nappy buckets (used for general cleaning) plus (now amost threadbare) terries used for mopping up/ cleaning/ wiping car windows etc......
I doubt if the economies have changed.
Because a new piece is cheaper than the nitromors and the heat gun.
Hear hear!
We used reusables for our now three year old until she started toddling, when we switched to disposables, and this was over two wet winters. The routine was a wash once every two days and then all the nappies were hung inside on one of the collapsible driers. I did a load of research including cost and convenience and while disposables are more convenient to use, re-usables are much cheaper even with just over a year of use (ignoring the environmental side for the moment). If you then have a second child the cost consideration is then huge as the nappies are more or less paid for and the only cost is washing. Your implication from your comment about 'a council high rise flat' is that those in more modest circumstances (as we were at the time) would not have the 'luxury' of being able to use re-usables. My suggestion is that this is a money saving measure, with a small investment in extra time for washing and hanging out (sorry, in) to dry. This is not so easily dismissed when one is tired and dealing with a small child, but saving money is never easy! At least in my experience.
Alistair
I've just been thinking as bit more about this. The nappies we currently use are 11-12p each, sometimes cheaper if on a deal, and we find we only need to change them about 4 times a day. So the daily cost is 88p. That's less than the cost of half a pint of beer. This is without taking into consideration the water/electric/washing liquid/sterilant/tumble drying costs of reusables. Half a pint or not having to wash shitty nappies - sorry but I'm not convinced on the costs issue.
As a point of interest does anyone have any idea roughly how much leccy and water a triple A rated washing machine uses?
H"HLAH" wrote
The nappies we currently use
Duh that should of course be 96p - still cheaper than half a pint of beer :-)
h
Say a quid a day, so that's £365 a year. It's a lot. That is in the ballpark of my total energy bill. So without knowing (my favoured position in a discussion) I am assuming that it does not cost that much to run a washing machine 3/4 times a week on 90 deg C wash.
Off home for half a pint of beer.
Alistair
It was about "hanging out to dry". If you don't have a large, warm basement or laundry room and maybe no garden a tumble drier looks attractive in spite of the cost.
All I am saying is that
1: you need to include *all* the costs 2: you might think about putting a financial value on your time 3: you have to live within your constraints.One of our locals has up to 30 kW of mill stream going through his back garden, and he is always banging on in the press about the economies of a little turbine. But then if I had that sort of resource I would certainly be using it too.
I welcome debates (like most of the above) where people are quoting checkable figures. What I find so depressing about enviro-mania is the repetion of unsubstantiated or just plain incorrect information and the way it is becoming a new religion: all a matter of faith, and if you don't believe then you are a sinner. In reality Porritt and the rest of them have just as much of a vested interest as the chairman of BP.
The figures were gathered from several different sources, and I'd read some of them as long ago as 1997.
Believe what you want, but if you're interested in the truth:
Yes, I have raised children with both systems. I've had one child with whom we used disposables exclusively, one with whom we used a combination, and three with whom we've used cloth exclusively.
And yes, I've lived through a wet winter (I live in one of the wetter areas of the UK) in a very modest townhouse. We used a drying rack over the bath for all our laundry, not just nappies, as we didn't have a tumble-drier or any other way of drying it.
FWIW, I've had two children in nappies at the same time, and used cloth nappies at that time. It wasn't nearly as onerous as you seem to think.
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