Cloth nappies cost between £100-£400 as opposed to disposable at £800-£1,200 for the 2.5 years of normal nappy use. 3 billion nappies are thrown away in the UK each year with 90% going to landfill. They can take up to 500 years to decompose. Disposables make up 4% of total household waste and up to 50% of that of families with one baby Disposable nappies use up to 5 times more energy to produce than cotton ones – that's including the washing process. Seven million trees are felled every year in Canada and Scandinavia to supply the pulp for disposables sold in the UK.

Nappies use a type of polymer in their lining. Sodium poly(acrylate) absorbs 500 times its own mass of water. One of the Surprising Properties of Polymers

Chemical Background Sodium polyacrylate is a polymer with a molecular weight of over one million! Groups called sodium carboxylate are attached along the backbone.