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Original article: https://theconversation.com/960-million-dirty-diapers-are-a-big-waste-problem-what-can-be-done-with-them-243608
The use of disposable diapers (nappies) is growing in African countries. The disposable diaper undoubtedly makes it easier for many parents to work or spend time on other things, including their own and their child’s wellbeing.
At the same time, disposable diapers give rise to a new set of problems: how to manage the waste generated after the products are used. Even in high-income countries, diaper waste typically ends up in landfill or incinerators, rather than being recycled.
There is a gap in research in disposable diaper use in low- and middle-income countries. Without knowing how many disposable diapers are being used, countries cannot plan proper waste management.
We research water, sanitation, public and environmental health and infectious diseases. We wanted to establish the scale of the disposable diaper problem in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.
To do this, we tracked disposable diapers through publicly available household expenditure surveys that show how much money people are spending on diapers.
We found that in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria about 960 million disposable diapers were being used every year, mostly in urban areas.
To find out how these diapers were being disposed of, we compared household spending on disposable diapers with each household’s reported method of waste disposal. We found that 514 million disposable diapers per year were consumed in households that reported indiscriminately dumping, burning, or burying their solid waste. We estimate that these 514 million disposable diapers are therefore not being disposed of safely.
In many impoverished communities, the government has not provided proper waste removal services. When disposable diapers are thrown away outside, people can be exposed to diseases from the faeces. Young children who come into contact with the diapers can contract diarrhoea and helminth (worm) infections, stunting their growth.
The most recent household surveys available for us to study were more than five years old. Since then, more diaper production factories have opened on the continent. It is likely that the use of disposable diapers has grown.
Our research points to an urgent need for solutions that turn diaper waste into an economically valuable resource. This could prevent used diapers from being tossed outdoors.
Diaper use in Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana
Disposable diapers can survive in the environment for many years. They do not biodegrade because they contain a super-absorbent polymer and plastic layers comprising propylene and polyethylene.
When people throw away used disposable diapers in their garbage, these pose a health hazard to animals and humans. Burying diapers is no solution, as dogs and other animals can dig them up.
Ashley Cooper/Getty Images
The public health and environmental challenge becomes even greater when diapers are dumped into latrines or the environment, where they cause blockages and pollute rivers. This usually happens because people lack proper garbage collection services. Disposable diapers are also difficult to burn at low temperatures. Flushing them down the toilet is a convenient sanitation solution. But it risks undermining environmental quality for future generations because they block drains and sewage lines, causing sewage to spill into the open.
These days, household survey questionnaires in 17 of the 48 lower or middle income countries in Africa record the amount of money spent on disposable diapers and waste collection services. This makes it possible to track poverty rates and also households that are buying disposable diapers but have no safe way to discard them.
These surveys showed that nearly half of Nigerian households with young children and a quarter of Kenyan households with young children used disposable diapers. The majority of households (55.6% in Kenya and 61.2% in Nigeria) had no safe means of disposing of these. In contrast, most Ghanaian households using diapers had waste collection services or public dumpsite access for disposing of used diapers.
The surveys also provided clues as to how poorer households were able to afford diapers. While wealthy households buy their diapers in bulk multi-packs, poorer households typically buy diapers one by one. This is part of the “kadogo” (small in Kiswahili) economy, where retailers break bulk packages of goods down into small quantities so that their hard-pressed customers can afford them.
Used disposable diapers can be recycled
What can be done to dispose of the 960 million diapers every year in these three countries? Our research found that innovative solutions for managing diaper waste could work.
One of these solutions might be recycling. The diapers would have to be valuable enough for waste pickers to earn a living from recycling them. This has happened in England, where a small-scale effort was set up to recycle disposable diapers. In South Africa, a recent pilot project with informal waste pickers showed that families in low and middle income households were willing to separate disposable diapers from other waste and keep them to be collected if this was easy to do.
Read more:
What other countries can teach us about ditching disposable nappies
Research is underway into alternative diaper waste solutions. Currently the only established options are incineration or landfill. When burning diapers, an incinerator generates enough heat that it could be used for energy recovery or even firing a pottery kiln, thereby making revenue from the waste.
Research has indicated that recovering energy from diaper burning is economically viable. However, incineration also produces carbon dioxide and other polluting gases.
If fully developed, solutions like this could eventually make the disposable diaper worth separating.
What needs to happen next
Many household surveys now provide approximate locations of the households responding to the survey. This means surveys can also identify where mismanaged waste hotspots are. These locations can become priorities for targeting remedial action.
In future, disposable diaper consumption trends among households lacking waste services could also be monitored by analysing household expenditure surveys over multiple years.
However, research into product innovation and waste management needs to start now, given the scale of the diaper waste problem.
In the meantime, communities across Africa are increasingly exposed to health and environmental risks from the disposable diaper.