High & Dry
| Published: 28th June 2007 07:17 |
Civilisation has spread almost everywhere. Today, even in far off Kathmandu, it’s possible to pick up a pack of disposable nappies.
During the bitterly cold winters in the high Himalayas, however, wet nappies can freeze solid. But the tradition-minded Nepalese mother can always turn to a time-tested alternative to Western luxury - yak dung. Just fill a leather bag with dried dung, insert the infant up to its armpits and tie it with a drawstring. The yak dung, more absorbent than blotting paper, ensures that babies only need to be exposed to the lethally cold air once a week!
Western mothers usually change their babies’ nappies rather more frequently.
Four hundred years ago, however, British babes were lucky to get changed every three or four days. Only with the advent of cheap cotton would they see a change for the better.
By the late Victorian era, infants in Europe and North America were wearing the ancestor of the modern nappy; a square or rectangle of linen, cotton or stockinet, held in place with safety pins.
The Second World War led to a cotton shortage in Europe. In 1942 an absorbent pad made from unbleached, creped cellulose tissue was invented for use as a nappy. But it was an American, Marion Donovan who, in 1950 invented the true disposable nappy. Her prototype was made of shower curtain plastic into which a cotton nappy had been inserted; a later product was made from nylon parachute cloth, with plastic snap-fastenings instead of safety pins.
In the 1950’s disposable nappies were considered a luxury item due to their convenience factor; but they expensive and relatively poor in performance. By the end of the century, they had become affordable and improved designs meant that they have become extremely reliable. The result of this success? The disposing of all these nappies has become a real problem. “Today, so many disposable nappies are sold annually that heaped together the pile would be higher than Mount Everest!”
Only at the very end of the millennium did a genuinely biodegradable disposable appear: Natural Baby Supreme, produced by Absormex, a Mexican company, was a nappy which would fragment in less than four weeks.
However, the manufacturers have a long way to go before they become as eco-friendly as the Nepalese yak dung.
Source: CIG Ltd.
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