In the UK alone, 3 billion plastic nappies, representing around 4% of all household waste, is sent to incinerator every year. 

Schemes to encourage reusables uptake have not been successful, persuading less than 10% of all users to switch.

Accepting that disposables are here to stay, it's time to force manufacturers to redesign them to avoid oil based plastic.

Plant-based alternatives that deliver the same performance and functionality are available and recent research shows that they can be safely composted at end-of-life offering a fully ciruclar, less damaging impact to the planet. 

But there is no incentive for big brands to adopt these innovative smart materials leaving governments and councils forced to pay the cost of cleaning up the plastic waste.  

Big brands bombard us with the notion that continuing our reliance on virgin plastic is unavoidable for these essential products. And they encourage our government to invest in building an expensive network of recycling plants to handle their waste. 

 

 

 

 

Recycling this plastic does slow the take-make-waste journey, but it doesn’t reduce the carbon impact of drilling for the oil in the first place or change the final destination. The plastic will still exist and will one day require incineration or landfill. 

Only compostable, plant-based nappies can change the destination and create a fully circular model for disposable nappies. 

Using natural materials like bamboo, cotton, paper and corn starch, these products can be designed to be compatible with existing composting systems. It has been proven that a mix of mechanical and enzymatic processing can safely break down the entire product within a short timeframe and offers a genuine circular solution which designs out the need for oil in manufacturing and any end-of-life waste. 

A 100% certified compostable nappy is now within widely available commercial reach. But big brands won't change without incentive. We need comprehensive policies today to incentivize big brands to invest in these innovative compostable materials for their products and stop the use of single-use plastic. 

In 2024, we were collectively successful in forcing manufacturers to stop using oil-based plastic in their wet wipes. Now it's time to use that same collective power to push government to set a timeframe for a ban on the use the oil-based plastic in nappy production. 

Your signature could be the changing force in this critical conversation. Please sign this petition today and let's design out oil based single use plastic.