In the drought.....

[poshBecks]

What do you guys reckon?
With this drought & stage 3 water restrictions. I'm sure we'll end up with more restrictions too ( no rain in the near future) what do you feel is more important?

* Conserving water?
*Reducing land fill?

I use cloth & sposies at the moment... until I get a big enough stash of pocket nappies. So I am only doing 1 extra load every 2 days, but I was justing thinking... water is so precious at the moment. I dont know what is more important? :rolleyes:

[JATS]

I do both :D Use sposies then incinerate them :thumbsup:

[poshBecks]

I do both :D Use sposies then incinerate them :thumbsup:
Oh wow, I dont think we are allowed to incinerate here. :confused:

[poshBecks]

*bump*

c'mon guys I'm curious!! :p

[rynosmum]

Excellent question PoshBecks *Giggles at name again...*

I guess we live in hope that the water issue will repair itself at some point but landfill will be with us forever.

I'm very conservative with water now, we have also just had someone come in and quote on a rainwater tank so we can at least keep the plants alive. I recycle as much as I can and use mulch on the gardens...:thumbsup:

but I do use disposables which is obviously not helping our environment at all.:thumbsdown:

[poshBecks]

I guess we live in hope that the water issue will repair itself at some point but landfill will be with us forever.


Good Point Katrina!! :rolleyes:

[the_queen]

I don't think we're on water restrictions here (and if we are, nobody's told me!!) but if we were, I'd just make adjustments to compensate for washing nappies. I do one load of nappies a day. It's not even a full load in the machine really, I turn the dial to "half full". If I needed to cut back on the water I used, I'd just maybe take a bath instead of a shower, or try to cut back on the amount of clothes I wash. THAT is where I use the most water. But there's never a suggestion that we should switch to disposable clothes, or drying the dishes with kitchen paper so there's no tea-towel washing. ;)

[Lunar]

Water=life.
I am a sposie user...would luv to use cloth but it just is not realistic in this house! I just don't have the time esp with my Emy!

[tickle]

A good question would be, how much water, and other valuable resources (oil etc), is used in the manufacturing of disposables? I do an extra load every second day in a front loader, on 'eco wash' and it only uses 52 litres of water. Can't get much better than that!

[InSaneOne]

i think cloth is a much better way to go. how much water do they use in the manufacturing of the disposable nappy anyways? it would have to be more than what a washing machine would use every 2nd day. i wash mine every 2nd day and i use a half cycle. i try to wash sheets or towles with them too as my full load uses less water than 2 half loads do. i think if the sun sterilises everything than it doesn't matter what i wash with the nappies.

so how much water do they use when making a disposable nappy????

[Seekrit]

I think the water situation will eventually be 'fixed' in a few years.. however the landfill situation will take, what is it, 3000 years to be 'fixed' or something?

What's the deal, btw, of using grey water in the washing machines - is there a way to do this? Maybe it's something to look at....

[Funkychicken]

I agree Happylady. It would be interesting to see the water usage rates in the nappy factories. I think they make quite a lot of products besides disposables though so it would be difficult to pinpoint usage for a single purpose. I do think though it would be much more than the average amount spent washing cloths in the home.
We have set up our washing water to water our back yard via a hose with various holes in it to spread out the water. It is really easy to do this and means your garden is watered without overstepping water restrictions. It also means much less 'frothy' water in our waterways.

[Funkychicken]

I think the water situation will eventually be 'fixed' in a few years.. however the landfill situation will take, what is it, 3000 years to be 'fixed' or something?

What's the deal, btw, of using grey water in the washing machines - is there a way to do this? Maybe it's something to look at....
I think you are referring to what I have just mentioned. The water coming from the machine (and shower/bath if possible) is referred to as grey water.

[Seekrit]

I think you are referring to what I have just mentioned. The water coming from the machine (and shower/bath if possible) is referred to as grey water.
yeah.. I keep a bucket in my shower and sometimes use the filled bucket to wash bits of the bathroom and what-not when I'm done. I know some people who water their gardens with it... :)

I was wondering if there was a way to tip that water into the washing machine.. i wonder if my machine fills to a certain point or it it simply adds x-litres depending on where the dial is for water.. yanno?

[InSaneOne]

seekrit - if you have a top loader you can add bucket water. i had an old one of my grans that filled really slow so i used to help it by filling it with a bucket. now in my new machine i use the rinse water from our clothes to use the wash cycle for my nappies. when the machine does the rinse drain, i let the water run into the tub. then i use the bucket to put it in for the nappy load.

you should be able to use a bucket to fill your machine.

[KiLLaKaZ]

seekrit - if you have a top loader you can add bucket water. i had an old one of my grans that filled really slow so i used to help it by filling it with a bucket. now in my new machine i use the rinse water from our clothes to use the wash cycle for my nappies. when the machine does the rinse drain, i let the water run into the tub. then i use the bucket to put it in for the nappy load.

you should be able to use a bucket to fill your machine.


excellent idea!! they should be advertising this sort of thing on telly! an easy thing for us to do, & would save HEAPS of water if everyone around australia recycled their bath/shower/washing machine water!

in japan they have hoses they can use between their bath & washing machine to use their bath water in the washing machine! also, they have taps on top of the toilet, when u flush the toilet the water fills up from the tap on top, & u can wash your hands with that water while the toilet fills up! such a simple idea that would end up saving HEAPS of water, yet i've never seen it here in australia!

[Seekrit]

seekrit - if you have a top loader you can add bucket water. i had an old one of my grans that filled really slow so i used to help it by filling it with a bucket. now in my new machine i use the rinse water from our clothes to use the wash cycle for my nappies. when the machine does the rinse drain, i let the water run into the tub. then i use the bucket to put it in for the nappy load.

you should be able to use a bucket to fill your machine.
a hah! excellent!

I'm turning into a hippy.. :eek:

[poshBecks]

Ahhhh.. cool. I had no intentions of switching back to sposies, they are way cheaper. I was curious as to what others thought. :D

[LucyE]

What's more important - conserving water or reducing landfill through nappy use?

I think the answer for both is to use cloth. Disposables use so much water per nappy to manufacture that it just comes nowhere near comparing to cloth (even with all the washing added to the growing phases and manufacture). Hmmm, I think you can find a link to the average amounts on one of the www.ozclothnappies.org links page (sorry can't be more specific - too lazy to find it myself again).

Our situation - We live in an area that's been on level 4 restrictions for a while now and are about to go to level 5. We have two rainwater tanks and have stopped watering the garden completely. I have a frontloader with an autosensor that uses only enough water for the size of that particular load. Very water efficient. Especially since I don't have to wash extra clothes or linen from leaks.

Re greywater - I have chosen not to use grey water in our yard because I wash cloth nappies and use OMOmatic. Washing nappies means that the rinse/prewash water may contain bacteria from faeces which would then be going onto our garden beds untreated. Not very hygenic. Much better to have the septic system deal with it and then have the 'treated' water slowly release the water. Most washing detergents are high in phospherous (sp?) among other things which is not very good for the soil over time. It can lead to mineral and salt build up which will eventually kill plants. Check with your local council if you are allowed to use grey water because most areas won't allow it.

[cwsmum]

We have set up our washing water to water our back yard via a hose with various holes in it to spread out the water. It is really easy to do this and means your garden is watered without overstepping water restrictions.

Last time I heard anything about doing this, you still weren't allowed to in QLD (well, my council area anyway)...you could use buckets to get the water to the garden tho. Someone correct me if they have changed the rules again :)

Also, whoever mentioned incinerating sposies...thats not allowed in QLD either :no: Some old neighbours of mine were using their BBQ (wood burning type) as an incinerator and got in lots of trouble with the council for doing it. They were burning ALL their rubbish (including things like pads/tampons :barf: ) in something not designed for that purpose so you can imagine how bad that smelt, not to mention how sick the rest of the neighbourhood felt.

:fingerscrossed: that it rains soon...but at least we are all learning some new ways to save water, and hopefully keep our water bills down in the future.