13+6

Just checked my junk mail and have received a very interesting and comprehensive email from South Gloucestershire Council about the nappies and it's making me reconsider disposables (if I buy the cheap Asda ones!)...

Dear Mrs Cater,

Thank you for your e-mail in which you asked why South Gloucestershire Council was no longer running a voucher scheme which contributes towards the cost of purchasing cloth nappies.

The Council did run such a scheme between 2002 and 2008 and it was discontinued in 2009.  A cost/benefit appraisal of the scheme at the time showed us that the cost of operating it was prohibitively high for the low number of residents who took it up and far outweighed the financial savings that were made. There is also some debate about the environmental benefits of cloth nappies above disposable nappies.  Disposables consume more raw materials and produce more solid waste but cloth nappy production and use consume more water and energy and produce more atmospheric emissions and waste water effluent.  A report by the Environment Agency in 2005 reported that disposable nappies have the same environmental impact as reusable ones when the effect of laundering cloth diapers is taken into account.

However, that compared using cloth nappies with land filling disposable nappies and since 2009, developments in the way that residual household waste is processed in South Gloucestershire have made the previous scheme even less beneficial environmentally.  Consequently, there are no plans to reintroduce the voucher scheme in South Gloucestershire.

You may be interested to know that the vast majority of the Council’s black bin waste, including disposable nappies, is now being sent to a mechanical, biological treatment plant at Avonmouth instead of being sent to a landfill site.  The waste, including disposable nappies is then fed into an advanced conversion technology facility in Avonmouth which has begun exporting energy to the National Grid. 

This is the UK’s ‘first commercial thermal energy plant of its kind.  The 13-megawatt plant uses pyrolysis and gasification technologies to produce electricity from this refuse-derived fuel (RDF). Pyrolysis is used to heat the RDF to a high temperature in the absence of oxygen to produce gas and carbon char, with the latter material being processed through gasification to produce gas and some ash residue. The gas produced, known as ‘syngas’, is then burnt for electricity.  

 Thank you for your enquiry and your concern for the environment.  Wishing you and your growing family well.

 Yours sincerely,

 Bruce Kent (Principal Officer – Waste Collection Authority)

Maybe we aren't destined for a WALLE world after all!