Parents in Swansea are being offered a cash incentive to use real nappies instead of disposable ones.
Swansea Council has teamed up with the Real Nappy Campaign in a bid to reduce the number of nappies regularly sent to landfill.
Families can nornally dispose of around 5,000 nappies for one baby during a two and a half year period and the weight of them can be equivalent to a family car.
The Council is now offering parents a £50 voucher to help them kick-start their conversion to Real Nappies. The Welsh Assembly Government has provided grant funding to the Council to cover the cost of the voucher.
Trish Flint, Swansea Council’s Recycling Officer, said: “Around 200 million disposable nappies are sent to landfill sites every year in Wales and they take approximately 300 years to decompose. We want to try and get parents to think about alternative methods and help reduce this huge amount of waste.
“We’ve teamed up with the Real Nappy Campaign to promote the use of real nappies.
“The voucher can be used to buy a starter pack of nappies and biodegradable liners.”
It’s also estimated that parents will spend over £1,200 on disposable nappies during the time their children are wearing them.
Trish said: “As well as saving the environment, parents can save hundreds of pounds over the course of the child’s nappy years.”
The Council is also set to make changes to kerbside collections of refuse and recycling in Swansea in a further effort to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.
The first phase of the changes will be introduced in October when residents whose kerbside collections are on a Thursday and Friday will get an alternate weekly collection service.
On a rolling two-week rota it will mean that during the first week household rubbish in black bags, plastics and kitchen waste will be collected.
Then in the second week kitchen waste and other recyclables like glass, cans, paper, cardboard and green waste in their containers will be collected.
Parents who want to sign up for Real Nappies can get more information and register for the voucher by calling the Council’s Environment Call Centre on 01792 635600.
