Holy poops!Nappies can berecycled?

Find out how Pura NappiCycle - in partnership with Asda - is recycling nappies in the UK.

Nappies have been recycled in Wales since 2009 - thanks to NappiCycle’s ground-breaking work and the support of the Welsh Government.

We think nappy recycling is the only way to immediately eliminate polluting nappy waste from landfill, so we forged a partnership with NappiCycle in 2020 to help spread the word to the rest of the UK with the goal of making it a service available to all parents.

Now we’re delighted to announce that Pura NappiCycle, supported by popular supermarket chain Asda, has launched the first nappy recycling trial of its kind in England.

Tell me about the trial

Phase one of our trial provides 48 households and one nursery group in Bristol free kerbside used nappy collection for 6 months!

On average we collect around 0.5 tonnes of nappy waste from these households and businesses every two weeks, that’s the same weight as a grand piano or a polar bear.

The nappy waste is sent to NappiCycle’s plant in South Wales, where it is cleaned, and the plastics and cellulose fibres separated for re-use. Nothing is sent to landfill! Instead, the nappy fibres are repurposed for useful stuff like materials for roads. That’s really driving change!

What’s so bad about nappy waste?

Disposable nappies are super convenient and offer an effective way to keep your baby’s bottom clean. But every day, 8 million disposable nappies are thrown into landfill in the UK. Each one takes hundreds of years to degrade – long outliving the babies they were used on.

While there’s a lot of green innovation happening in the baby care sector right now, the perfect eco nappy just doesn’t exist yet (believe us, we’ve looked).

The world can’t wait. Nappy recycling can prevent millions of tonnes of valuable resources from ending up in landfill, or being incinerated, now.

In fact, we’ve calculated that if the 3bn nappies used each year in the UK were 100% recycled, it would be the same as removing 72,000 cars from our roads annually. Wow.

Why wait?

It’s our vision that every UK parent has access to free kerbside nappy recycling. In reality, this will take some work!

When it comes to recycling, Wales is a global leader. The country ranks third in the world for domestic recycling. In Wales, where nappy recycling is offered to households, it is a local authority provided service that is financially supported by the Welsh Government.

Extending this service to the rest of the UK requires local authorities to change their waste management schedules, central government support and potentially legislative change.

That’s why we’re running the Bristol trial. We hope the results will help inform and convince those in power about the feasibility and benefits of nappy recycling. We promise to keep you posted.

Watch our progress, we’re working hard to create a big change.