Iri's posts with tag: disposable nappies
A Prepackaged Plasticised Planet
People who have been reading my blogs for a while will be aware that towards the end of May my household was adopted by the cute wee kitten, (Simba), in the above pic.
It has been a quite few years since we have been owned by a cat and so I have discovered big changes on the pet food shelves at the supermarket. In the old days you just bought tins of Jellimeat or Jellichicken or some meat from the butcher.
But now the shelves groan with stacks of tiny tins of Feasties or Gourmet tins even huge bags or cartons of dried biscuit thingies. You can even buy special packs of food especially designed for kittens or even for your geriatric cat.
I guess thats all cool BUT there is one thing that I do find offensive and that is the plethora of SINGLES packs.
These are ONE meal sized packs of cat food (pretty flash looking food too I must say) but ALL THAT PACKAGING!!!! FOR CAT FOOD EVEN!!!
ALL THAT PLASTIC!!!
This is at a time in our evolution when we really need to be concerned with the future of our planet and whether it will be able to sustain human life past 2050 even, and when right now it is timely to review our huge landfills and carbon emissions.
We really need to be reviewing the wastage of our resources. If a cat got two meals a day from singles packs and if you think about how many people keep cats who may be potentially feeding them from the ridiculous packets, it is mind boggling.
It is just as bad as the wastage of the throwaway plastic bottles from bottled water and the throwaway disposable nappies on the bums of the western babies.
There is a tablespoon of oil in each disposable nappie. (diapers if you live in the USA).
Are people so lazy now they cannot wash a bottle or a nappie or store a tin of cat food????
And what really gets me mad is that a large ingredient in the manufacture of plastic is OIL.
In Iraq, soldiers and civilian people are being killed because of the Western greed for OIL.
Women, Men and Children are being killed so that we can continue to feed our cats from Singles Petfood Packs, drink bottled water from Disposable Plastic Bottles, and use Disposable Plastic Nappies on our babies.
PS: Simba gets fed a combination of tinned meat, (one tin lasts a week and goes into our recycling bin), and from a large sack of dried food, (he hasn't got through the full sack yet, but when he does its recyclable).
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Sometimes Life Is Full Of Sh*t And We Just Have To Deal With It
 the proto-type disposable nappy(diaper)composter
"One Use Nappies" 
Linda, (aintmisbehavinat48), inspired this shitty blog ... she said "Well I won't tell my take on the diapers cuz even though I hate changing diapers I do not want to save and clean cloth ones with my Granbaby. EEEEEEWWWWWWEEEEE!!!!! Stinky! LOL! with the disposables you can hurry and close it up and throw it away. Sorry! That one I can't help and I know how bad they are for our environment. Hopefully they will come up with a recyclable diaper soon huh?"
I too am a mother, and also a grandmother and from this perspective I reckon two of the best inventions for mothers are the automatic washing machine and "disposable" nappies .
Only thing is, they really should be called "one use" nappies (or diapers if you prefer), because the way they fill up our landfills and add to the carbon emissions on our planet certainly has nothing to do with the word disposable.
So we do need to deal with and that is where creativity comes in (and Natalie)...
"TRULY Disposable Nappies" 
Here in New Zealand we have a national science project competition for school kids where the kids have to identify a problem and figure out a solution. In 2003 fourteen year old Linwood High School student Natalie Crimp, concerned about the environmental mess created by so-called disposable nappies filling landfills around the world, identified the problem for her science project and came up with a method to produce good quality garden compost from disposable nappies.
(we bring them up smart over here)
Enter Karen Upston, a Rangiora mother of two, who, inspired by Natalie's work set out to trial a commercial-scale, viable nappy composting unit (you see it in the above pic).
The Process
(this whole section is copied from Karen's website)
The Nappy Store is operating a small home-based plant in Rangiora, with the goal to provide an environmentally friendly solution to the problem of growing landfill waste in New Zealand.
How can Nappies be turned into compost which is safe to use on my garden?
R5 Solutions have developed the commercial composting prototype unit 6.5m long and 1.2m wide to conduct this trial.
The combination of the microbes created by rotting organic waste, the continual mixing and aerating of the compost by the HotRot System and the temperature created by the compost has proven to eliminate the harmful pathogens. As a result the final compost is clean and "safe enough to eat." These contributing factors are monitored and tested daily.
The unit will be (is) set up at The Nappy Store, 63 River Road, Rangiora, and can compost up to 500 kg of waste per day, or approximately 2000 nappies.
As nappies are very high in moisture content, we will also be feeding the unit wood chips and house hold food scraps in order to reduce the moisture level, and ensure “Premium” grade compost is coming out the other end.
Part of the ongoing process is to thoroughly test the quality of the compost in laboratories BEFORE it is available for purchase.
Nappy Composting Update - July 5th 2007
Trial will cease from 12noon Thursday 12th July 2007
Since we last updated you on the composting trial we have made some significant steps forward in regards to a purpose built commercial nappy composting plant, we have had three separate meetings with both the Waimakariri and Hurunui councils. Thank you to the many of you who responded to our questionnaire last month. These results were collated and results have helped us with making some future decisions.
We now have many processes to go through in order to develop the plant and move forward into the future for all of us.
The trial that we have been conducting out here was to not only develop the right 'recipe' for composting of nappies, but to also work through the logistics of how this service could work on a commercial scale.
We have involved over 200 families, six pre-schools, our local maternity hospital, elderly residents and a Christchurch Branch of the IHC.
As you are aware this was a privately funded trial and we have still received no financial support to date. We are now five months down the track and are extremely happy with the trial results and the conclusions that we have made. The trial was proposed to last for 3 - 6 months and as we have achieved all of the objectives that the trial was set to obtain from 12noon on Thursday the 12th July 2007 the trial will cease.
While we would love to continue providing the service as we currently are, we now need to put our available time, money and energy into the development of the new plant so that we can make this service available to the many interested families and businesses we hear from daily.
Over the last five months we have composted approximately 450,000 nappies which equates to 56 tonne. Our new plant will be able to compost up to 20,000 nappies per day or 2.5 tonne. This will be able to increase with demand up to 60,000 nappies or 7.5 tonne per day!
This has been an amazing trial to be involved in and we thank R5 Solutions for their incredible assistance and support. This trial would not have been possible without the loan of their Prototype HotRot unit and there technical knowledge and advice. No matter what the weather was or time of the day or night they were always here to help when we needed them. We have only just begun and amazing journey ahead with there team and look forward to what the future holds for us all as individuals and as a community.
This trial has attracted world wide interest which show the demand for this kind of service. If we don't use this opportunity to leap forward and take the next step we can only imagine what the future will hold for our children and grandchildren.
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October 2007 Updates
After I wrote the above blogs I did see on TV that the company R5 Solutions were making larger nappy composters for places overseas to run as a commercial operation. I thought that at least one was going to Canada. So I went to Google to see if I could find updated information for you.
This came from the R5 Solutions website.
First HotRot to North America
The first HotRot composting unit has been installed in North America.
A HotRot 1811-based system has been installed at the New Era Technologies composting facility in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Product from the HotRot unit will be compared with material processed through the current aerated container-based system with the expectation that the HotRot unit will produce a more stable product faster.
This installation in Canada will also provide an opportunity to test HotRot in severe winter conditions.
The unit has been installed outside but has been provided with a “winterisation package”, incorporating additional insulation and an air-to-air heat exchanger for recovering energy from the discharge air and using this to pre-heat injected air.
Where will you find us next?
Itinerary for Future Expos and Trade Fairs
26 - 30 Oct 2007 Eco Asia: Hong Kong http://ecoexpoasia.tdctrade.com/
Dr Peter Robinson, Marketing Manager of HotRot Exports Ltd and Jeff James, Director of LAM, will be attending. They will have a booth.
13 – 17 November 2007 National League of Cities Convention: New Orleans, Louisiana
http://www.nlc.org/CONFERENCES___EVENTS/citiesexpositions.aspx
Dr Peter Robinson, Marketing Manager of HotRot Exports Ltd and Gerald Tibbo, Director of Hatch, will be attending. They will have a stand, and would enjoy meeting with you.
28 – 29 November 2007 Canadian Waste and Recycling Symposium: Vancouver, Canada http://www.eventseye.com/fairs/trade_fair_event_6582.html
Dr Peter Robinson, Marketing Manager of HotRot Exports Ltd and Gerald Tibbo, Director of Hatch, will be attending. They will have a stand, and would enjoy meeting with you.
09 – 12 February 2008 United States Composting Conference: Oakland, California http://www.compostingcouncil.org/index.cfm
Dr Peter Robinson, Marketing Manager, or George Pottinger, General Manager/Director of HotRot Exports Ltd will be attending. We will update you closer to the time.
The impact on our environment 
It takes one full cup of crude oil to make the plastic for each "disposable" nappy.
1.3 million trees a year are felled for NZ babies in disposable nappies.
Disposable nappies use 3.5 times more energy, 8 times more non-renewable raw materials, 90 times more renewable materials than reusable nappies.
It takes as much energy to produce one disposable nappy as it does to wash a cloth nappy 200 times.
One baby in disposables will produce 2 tonnes of solid waste!
Disposable nappies take up to 500 years to decompose in landfill sites and can harbour up to 100 different types of virus, including live polio virus from vaccines.
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