Towelling Trauma - The search for the Non Disposable Nappy by Alison Mckay
As an environmentally-concious , temporary Ubudian, I’m a regular reader of Ibu Kat’s Greenspeak column: A few weeks ago she covered the awful wastage incurred by mothers using disposable diapers which end up in landfills hanging around for hundreds of years. As a new mother and a visitor, the last thing I want to do is add to Bali’s already difficult refuse problem but what are the viable alternatives?
Although there are environmentally friendly disposables being developed, they are not available here as yet and even if they were, I’m sure they would be quite expensive. If I want to be green and keep my money, I will have to use some kind of washable cotton towelling nappy. As Ibu Kat points out, producing cotton is heavily dependant on chemicals but washing and reusing cotton towelling nappies is far preferable to throwing away plastic nappies and is at least a step in the right direction.
Reliable sources informed me that the Tiara Dewata shopping centre in Denpasar has a good baby section in its supermarket and across the road there are more baby shops than you can shake a stick at, stocking every type of baby accoutrement that can be imagined. It seemed a good place to start, especially as I could drop by the Denpasar fabric markets and see if they had any thin towelling material that I could have made up into nappy squares, which was my plan B.
I found myself in a Catch 22 type situation, towelling nappies clearly aren’t popular here and my Indonesian isn’t good enough to describe what I was looking for. I needed a cotton nappy to show the shop assistants what I meant and yet couldn’t find an example for love or money! It seems that there are no towelling nappies to be had at Tiara Dewata or across the road in the myriad of baby shops but on the other hand both these places have pretty much everything else one could possibly need and for very reasonable prices (I bought lots of little front fastening baby shirts for 3000R each which has been all my baby has worn so far).
By this time I was completely over shopping and my feet were about to explode but I decided to persevere and try the fabric markets for nappy material. The fabric market stretches into infinity with the most wonderful selection of fabrics I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to browse undisturbed and once you find something you like you have to haggle with the proprietor for three hours, not something a tired, pregnant lady wants to do.
In about the third stall I found some lovely cotton towelling, ideal for my purpose but the owner came bustling over and after the hard sell told me they were about ten times what I would pay in Australia. I could have haggled and I’m sure it would have been an inexpensive and green solution but at the end of a long day, with a cool, quiet taxi waiting, I really couldn’t be bothered. I was well and truly over Denpasar and couldn’t wait to get back to quiet, jungly, Ubud.
The difficulty remained that I still didn’t have anything to put on the business end of baby. The Balinese women I spoke to said that they just avoided the whole issue by not using nappies at home and then using disposables on temple days or when out visiting. This is probably the easiest solution but I knew that it would be impractical for me, I really needed to find something workable and soon, before I actually had the baby.
In the end I found a bit of a make-do solution. At the Bintang supermarket, Ubud, they have the little, thin hand towels with good morning written on them in red, they cost about 3000R each and you can buy a stack at a time. They make ideal nappies, thin, washable and durable, except, how do you attach them to the baby? Further along the shelf in the baby section, they have packets of thin cotton jersey nappies with side ties (about 20,000 for 5). They’re no good on their own as the material is far too thin but if you fold the towels inside them, you get…a sort of environmentally friendly non-disposable nappy!
It’s not perfect but it’s the closest I’ve found to a solution, they’re cheap, locally available and reusable and I’m not adding to Bali’s litter problem. Having said that, it does involve a bit of extra washing when a big wee goes right through but that’s not the end of the world. They do catch the other stuff effectively though or I wouldn’t use or recommend them as no one needs that kind of headache! On the plus side I’ve found the little towels extremely handy for all sorts of baby related emergencies and when I’m home I can put the baby on a couple of towels and allow her bottom to air which keeps her nappy rash free.
For days out, or for when the odd wet patch might be embarrassing, you can use plastic over pants or change to pre-made non-disposable nappies. I haven’t been able to find plastic overpants for a small baby but at the Tiara Dewata supermarket there were ones for 3 months and up. The pre made disposables I have tried have had quite thick towelling and a plastic lining so they last longer than the towels and are better at keeping the wet in. However, they take a really long time to dry out in the humid atmosphere so aren’t practical for everyday unless you want to buy a huge amount (and if we’re being cheap and environmentally aware, you can’t sling them in a tumble drier).
Now that I have baby and see how many nappies we go through in just one day it really hammers home the terrible waste of disposables, even if we all just switched to towelling at home it would make a real difference. Apart from the environmental consequences it really is better for baby and better for your wallet. Bali has a serious and ongoing struggle with refuse, we’ve all seen the rubbish piles and there is almost always a disposable nappy perched jauntily on top. Many tourists bring their babies with them to Bali because the culture is so welcoming to children, it would be a shame to take home memories and leave problems.
