New Zealand Celsias

There’s nappies (or diapers) you can dispose of in your rubbish (that inevitably end up in landfill) and there’s cloth nappies, which don’t employ the most pleasant or time efficient of wash techniques. Then there’s company gDiapers, who has provided a third option — a nappy you can flush. It’s gathering momentum as a product for environmentally-conscious parents because the product’s design, and the claims gDiapers makes about them, are authenticated by external research and Cradle to Cradle certification. 

“50 million disposable diapers go into the landfill every day in the US where they sit for up to 500 years. They are the third largest contributor to landfill and yet, they’re only used by 5 percent of the population for four to five hours at a time,” says Jason Graham-Nye, chief executive and co-founder of gDiapers. 

gDiapers have no elemental chlorine, no perfumes, and no plastic and consist of two parts – a washable cotton outer and a plastic-free insert that looks after the business end of things. The nappy insert outer is made from viscose rayon, a natural, renewable and non-fossil fuel source, that is, no plastics. The inner is made from super-absorbent fluffed wood pulp which, like the rayon, comes from sustainably managed forests. 

The flushable insert was the first consumer packaged product to win Cradle to Cradle certification. C2C certifiers MBDC evaluated the product’s ingredients, its likely impact of human and environmental health throughout its lifecycle, and its potential for being truly recycled or safely composted. Certification also required the evaluation of energy-use quantity and quality, water-use quantity, water-effluent quality, and workplace ethics associated with manufacturing. gDiapers provides detailed information on its website, including summaries of scientific studies about the compostability of the inserts they’ve designed, and a movie clip documenting the results of soil burial tests. And while gDiapers is now based in Portland, Oregon, the makers originally came up with the idea in a garden Shed in Sydney.

More at: http://www.gDiapers.com/ 

For the full case study, visit the NextPlay website