Time for a Nappy Change: beliefs and attitudes towards modern cloth nappies.

The United Nations Environment Programme highlights how the use of disposable nappies has become unsustainable, yet the practice of using modern cloth nappies (MCN) is niche. This study uses mixed methods of survey, story completion and focus group methods to explore how behaviour beliefs and attitudes to behaviour contribute to families’ decision making regarding the nappy system they use for their children. 1588 responded to the survey; 38 completed story completion activity; 24 participated in groups. This study finds that beliefs about the performance as a nappy, environmental credentials, financial considerations, laundry, effort, and hygiene differ according to the level of personal experience of using MCN. While beliefs about the environmentalcredentials of MCN create powerful drivers for the intention to use MCN, other beliefs about the upfront costs, laundry and effort contribute a negative attitude to MCN overall if their support network of other MCN users is not established. Current MCN users found using cloth nappy retailer websites, nappy libraries, and social media groups, including pre-loved and-sell groups, to be beneficial in improving attitude to MCN. This study concludes that interventions that simultaneously reduce or remove perceived barriers such as upfront costs, financial risks and too much effort, paired with campaigns which increase the likelihood of finding support, are more likely, than individual interventions, to be effective in increasing the number of families using MCN.Further study is needed to investigate the potential of interventions which reduce the financial risks such as, easy to access hire kits, spread the cost of MCN and pre-natal and newborn public services such as midwives and health visitors being well informed and encouraging of the use of MCN.<br/

Time for a Nappy Change: controls affecting families’ nappy choices

Lifecycle assessments suggest that modern cloth nappies have fewer environmental impacts than their disposablecounterparts in terms of GHG, plastic and landfill (UNEP 2021). However, despite these apparent environmentalbenefits consumers still use predominantly disposable nappies. This paper will use theories of plannedbehaviour to explore the differences in perceived and actual behaviours between disposable and cloth nappyusers. A self-selecting web-based survey was used to recruit participants with children up to the age of fiveand explore their decision-making in this regard. The findings of the survey reveal that disposable nappy usersare more likely to prioritise convenience and to cite additional laundry loads as the main reasons for not usingcloth nappies. This is despite tending to have the necessary infrastructure (such as disposable income, spaceand washing facilities) to enable them to do so. This indicates that the perceptions of home-laundered clothnappies as inconvenient makes families more likely to opt for disposable nappies. Whilst cloth nappies weregenerally assumed to be more environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing by all parents irrespectiveof their choices, this was not enough to overcome the convenience and ease of use for the majority of participants.This study concludes that many disposable nappy users select disposable nappies with the assumptionthat they are easier and more convenient when this may not be the case. The implication of this study is thatinterventions which improve the convenience of cloth nappies and the perception of ease of use will encouragegreater uptake of cloth nappies.References.UNEP. (2021) Recommendations from Life Cycle Assessments Single-use nappies and their alternatives hostedby. United Nations Environment Programme