This vast growth has largely come from aggressive marketing in the Global South, often in countries whose infrastructure struggles to deal with the sudden surge in plastic waste.
Trained
Indonesia, for example, produces more marine detritus than any other country but China. A World Bank study of pollution in the rivers passing through its main cities found that 21 per cent was nappies.
But it has also come in the global north – from a trap laid for parents by these corporations.
British children born between the 1940s and 1970s were, on average, potty trained by 12 to 18 months old. By 2004, that was 2.5. By 2021, it was 3.5 – translating into a billion extra disposable nappies a year.
A shocking 91 per cent of UK primary one teachers say that at least one child in their class arrived at school in 2021 without being toilet trained.
Huggies’ age chart now goes up to 5+, and the new Pampers’ nappy is for children who weigh 17+ kg – about an average five year old.
Child-oriented
Much of that work encouraging children to stay in nappies longer has been done through new products, like ‘training pants’.
If I remember one TV advert from my childhood, it is for Huggies pull-ups. Versions of this advert have infuriated television audiences across the world since 1991.
The children were subtly older than the normal age for wearing nappies at the time. It screeched its way into our collective consciousness with its monstrously catchy jingle “Mummy wow, I’m a big kid now!”
Some of it happened because delaying potty training seemed to chime with many of the shifts in parenting theory in recent decades.
In 1962, the US paediatrician TB Brazelton, proposed a ‘child-oriented’ approach, under which toddlers should be kept in nappies past the age of two. The theory is and was contentious among experts, but the nappy industry jumped on it.
Manipulation
Brazelton accepted funding from Proctor and Gamble, and appeared in their adverts: ”Don’t rush your toddler into toilet training or let anyone else tell you it’s time – it’s got to be his choice,” he advised in a 1990s commercial for Pampers’ nappies for older kids.
Jamie Glowacki, a potty training expert, dismisses as a myth the claim that children will somehow tell you when they are ready to be toilet trained.
“All your child has known is a diaper,” she writes, in her popular 2015 book Oh Crap. “What signal could they possibly give when they don’t know what it is they should be signalling?”
Glowacki, a former social worker who says she has helped thousands of families, argues that “unequivocally, potty training is easiest when done between the ages of 20 and 30 months”.
She also argues that training children before they enter that window is “unbelievably easier” than after, because once they pass two and a half, they “are that much more sophisticated and skilled at manipulation”.
Mountains
Alina Lyden from the children’s bladder and bowel charity ERIC, tells me this myth is causing parents real difficulties.
“We are absolutely inundated with calls from parents having problems. A big part of that is that they’ve missed that window in their development. It can become a real battle of wills,” she said to me.
In other words, the nappy industry has successfully pushed most parents to leave their children in nappies until they reach an age where it’s much harder to train them. And then, unsurprisingly, they end up staying in them even longer.
The myth produces mountains of pollution. And delayed toilet training increases the risk of various bladder and bowel disorders, including UTIs. Indeed, the last 20 years has seen a rise in UTIs among toddlers.
For the nappy industry, it is a myth worth billions.
Switched
The result is that the industry has managed to double the amount of time children spend in nappies – and so the number they sell.
And so the number that will remain stewing in landfill, seeping pollutants into the soil and methane into the air, likely for hundreds of thousands of years.
Alongside extending time in nappies, they’ve also taken on the two most common alternatives to disposables: reusable nappies, and the ‘communication elimination’ technique, still common in much of the Global South, where parents learn signs that children are about to go, and hold them over a toilet or sink.
For parents, disposables claim to mean less hassle, though modern reusables are much easier than I expected when we switched our second child onto them: they aren’t just pieces of cloth you swaddle them in anymore.
And in any case, what you save in time you pay in cash: it’s around £1,500 more per child to use disposables, if you potty train at two and a half.
Profits
Now that the average age has crept up, those numbers will be even higher. Again, the disposable nappy industry is imposing unnecessary extra costs, which hit the poorest parents hardest.
But reality is rarely what dictates demand in a capitalist economy.
In practice, disposable nappies produce much more profit than reusables, and so that allows for a much bigger budget for advertising and lobbying, which in turn help drive demand and so more profits.
We use disposables not because they are what’s best for babies, parents, or the planet, but because they generate the most profits for corporate giants.
A VERY BRITISH POOP
Another myth which has been of great assistance to the disposable nappy industry is the idea that reusable nappies are just as bad for the environment as disposables, due to all the washing and drying.
Speaking to friends, family and colleagues with babies, it’s a story that many of them have heard, and believed to be true. Which is perhaps unsurprising, as it’s one that the British government has helped to promote.
In 2021, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) conducted a meta-study, looking at all of the Life Cycle Analyses of disposable versus reusable nappies worldwide, and concluded that “in general, reusable nappies have lower environmental impacts than single use nappies.”
“Thus,” the UNEP adds, “an overarching policy recommendation is that there should be greater advocacy for and incentives to adopt reusable nappy systems.”
However, out of the papers they looked at, there was one which stood out: a UK government study from 2008, which found that reusable nappies were worse for the climate than disposables.
Reusables
The BBC was still citing data from it in 2018, and DEFRA eventually commissioned an updated version, which was published in 2023.
However, one person closely involved with the report’s production was highly critical of it, arguing that the company which wrote it was too quick to accept the claims of the disposable nappy industry.
Unlike the other reports the UN looked at, the one commissioned by DEFRA was primarily based on data provided by the nappy industry itself – though the company behind it told me they had taken some nappies apart and the data the companies provided roughly correlated with what they found.
They also repeatedly emphasised that they were ‘very impressed’ by the scientists employed by the disposable nappy industry, and accepted that the report failed to consider the fact that the percentage of renewable energy in Britain’s grid is rising rapidly, meaning the environmental impact of washing reusables is falling.
Similarly, the report doesn’t consider that parents who use reusable nappies are likely to also be on a renewable energy tariff, radically cutting the impact of their nappies.
Renewable
The report’s author said he was “not sure on the correlation between reusable nappy users and green energy supply”. He added: “There is also a lot of potential greenwashing about green tariffs”.
It doesn’t consider that disposable nappies are often put in the wrong bin – adding to their harm. Disposable nappies are not compostable, despite some advertising claims. Nappies are a major cause of recycling bins being contaminated, leading to the whole load going to landfill.
Reusables are certainly much cheaper. They are a more environmentally friendly option, according to most studies. This is particularly true when they are paired with a renewable tariff and eco-friendly detergent. In my experience, they are also (let’s be honest) a bit more faff. But not much.
But whether or not parents choose to use them, the big bucks for the nappy industry have come from tricking mums and dads into leaving toilet training too late. And that’s a filthy scandal.
This Author
Adam Ramsay is an investigative journalist and writes the Abolish Westminster newsletter. He is also a talented nappy changer.
This article has been published through the Ecologist Writers’ Fund. We ask readers for donations to pay some authors £250 for their work. Please make a donation now. You can learn more about the fund, and make an application, on our website.