When plastic backing cannot be phased-out, it is hidden

[pampers4U]

It wasn’t “parents want cloth backed products”.......it was KC and P&G getting out in front of a growing problem.

I don't think so, clothlike covers were developed because they were "cooler" to the touch while moms & dads held there baby's, diaper co's created that so the parent think there childs diapers breath.
Huggies and pampers *premium then swaddlers have a true cloth like cover, buts its not clothlike, its just woven plastic, pampers baby dry, cruisers, luvs brand have a woven plastic outer cover that is glued to a plastic back sheet (you can peel off the outer cover and have a plastic backed diaper if you wish) Back in the late 90's I use to wear pampers, luvs, & huggies. I did not like huggies brand because the clothlike cover would leech out and your waist area would feel like a damp, slimy sponge, both inside and outside, the plastic backed pampers and luvs felt drier to me, they would pull then lock away moisture as intended, the plastic cover would not let moisture transfer through to your clothing like huggies brand.
As far as adult sized disposable diapers that act cloth like, there missing something, Seni brand comes real close to being a true solution, but I find when I wear those that I get leeching of moisture onto my clothing after a few wettings (not overflow) I prefer plastic backed because I know that it will hold up, I don't like leaks, and I hate when dampness leeches through, it feels slimy.

 

[KitsuneFox]

I can not use "cloth backed" for 4 reasons

1: they do not stay secure - thanks to my body shape they are too lose and the ###ing tabs pop easily .
2: no one makes good high capacity 'cloth backed' ( Abena cloth backed leaks like a sieve )
[ you can go sit in a dirty diaper if you think I'm going to change myself multiple times a night ]
3: they are highly abrasive against my legs ... I live an active life, and cloth-backed always leave rub spots on the insides of my legs
4: the ones that actually 'breath' ( not the ones that make false claims ), constantly leak out the front ... i'm not joking, the 'moisture barrier' doesn't ###ing work

 

[PCBaby]

Surely they can make plastic nappies from biodegradable plastic like they make the carrier bags from. They burn the waste where I live and it generates electricity all them nappies are powering peoples homes

they could, but for those of you who like to keep a big stash of them, that could be problematical as it's light and heat that help them degrade. Soyou keep your nappies on an open shelf for a few months and when you come to use them you may find they all leak

 

[jellyjigger]

There are at least two types of cloth-like backing for incontinence products. This excludes diapers with breathable side panels regardless of the backing type as those silly panels turn a normal diaper into a glorified belted-undergarment as no side protection is offered.

Cloth-like backing types:

1. a polypropylene cloth-feel layer glued or heat-sealed to an inner polyethylene (PE/Poly) film (older style); may or may not be easily separated by hand

2. a sightly thicker polypropylene layer without any underlying polyethylene film (newer style); may consist of another layer of more tightly spun synthetic fibers, sprayed with some "sealing" chemical, or melted slightly - or a combination of those three all for purposes of preventing breathability, the very thing they all claim to try and do for comfort. Most of us would probably agree that whatever technique is used, results more in *water-resistance* but not *waterproofing*.

I don't know whether it is cheaper to produce #1 or #2. There may be a type #3, #4 or more for all I know? Anyone with experience in product manufacturing plants or patent searching might know the finer details and I would encourange them to chime in here.

Only then can we answer whether or not cloth-like exposes the wearer to more, less or the same amount of chemicals than plastic-backing. Separately, do the stretchy polypropylene fibers in cloth-like compost easier in landfills or can they trap and suffocate fish and insects no differently than polyethylene film? We've all heard that plastic bags can trap fish and wildlife, but diapers are much smaller and due to the filling probably can't trap things like a giant plastic bag could. Lucky for diapers, no amount of plastic-backing is going to trap fish and insects like plastic bottles and metal cans that went un-recycled. If anything, the chemical leached and compostability are probably the biggest environmental impact factors in diapers of all kinds.

#1, despite being the original cloth-like, still exists especially in children's products like those off-brand and brand-name kids "boxer" shorts (discontinued as of 2020?) and in dollar store diapers. Curity sleep pullups still have the plastic film inside. I've seen name brand cloth-like baby diapers are of the #2 type - with no underlying PE film to be found. Because I avoid cloth-like disposables in general, I haven't kept track which brand's cloth-likes (i.e. Certainty, Assurance, Prevail, Wings, ABDL versions, etc.) are the #1 or #2 type. Since the removal of the green Depend diapers in the late 90s, manufacturers began taking serious liberties from batch to batch and diapers across the board have lacked consistency ever since (however that's another topic!)

I do know that #2 style cloth-like backings are worse (my opinion) in every way such as the sag, weep-around, and pinhole-weep factors. If I didn't mind the cloth-like feel and had found a cloth-backed diaper that didn't sag or weep, probably costing a premium, the biggest problem is that you still need a genuine taping panel! Those damn velcro (i.e. hook-n-loop) tabs always stick to the bed, underwear, blankets or anything besides the diaper itself! Hook-n-loop simply doesn't seem to work (sorry, that's really another topic too!)

For those of you that have found and regularly use what you consider to be a *reliable* cloth-like diaper, can you confirm whether it is a #1 or #2 type?

 

[Minih]

Actual cloth nappies have a slightly higher carbon footprint then disposables, add to that the cost of washing and drying them, as well as the waterproof pants you also need, now menas that disposables are better for the environment, especially if they can be used to provide heat or recycled and used in other items. Most actual cloth nappies at the end of their life are normally only good as boosters, rags or for recycling into papaer.

That's not necessarily true - it depends on how you wash cloth nappies. If you do a separate pre-wash and then wash them at 90o, and tumble dry them, then cloth nappies do have a have greater energy use than disposables. On the other hand, if you wash them at 30o or 40o and line dry them, the energy use is less. If you have bamboo nappies instead of cotton that uses less water to produce the nappy in the first place and decreases the environmental cost too.

That's not considering the landfill impact of disposables - very few councils in the UK recycle nappies yet.

 

[ltaluv]

Anyone with experience in product manufacturing plants or patent searching might know the finer details and I would encourange them to chime in here.

Well, since you asked. I work in manufacturing, where we deal extensively with nonwoven films. Let me warn you, this is long and technical - if you're not interested in the technical aspects of diaper manufacturing, you should probably just skip this post.

There's not much to add to jellyjigger's excellent post. While there are thousands of different nonwoven films (the technical bake for the "cloth-like" stuff that goes into many products, every diaper I've seen has used polypropylene (generally known as PP, ironically enough). As jellyjigger pointed out, it can be laminated to a waterproof sheet (usually polyethylene, called PE, in diapers), or it can be heat sealed - they run the material across a heated roller to seal one side while leaving the other side textured. The former results in more waterproof material (although the PE can be treated in various ways to make it somewhat breathable instead of waterproof) and the latter results in porous, breathable material.

There is a dizzying array of other ways to make film, using PET, PETG, paper, or other fibers, sometimes with a separate binder. It can be laminated with PET, EVA, or many other films - I've used PET/EVA film in medical products manufacturing, and the plant in at now uses paper and Tyvek films that are breathable and heat sealable. For diapers, though, it seems to be PP and PE, at least in the ones I've seen.

Note that these are not particularly biodegradable - the cloth-like backing does not help with making diapers more green. Many of the biodegradable plastics tend to degrade around moisture (I'm looking at you, PLA!) And would be poor choices, but there probably are films that could be used - that's outside of my area of expertise, but I'd imagine that the big manufacturers are actively looking at this issue.

As far as the useability, I tend to avoid cloth-backed because it chafes my inner thighs. I don't wear wet diapers for extended periods, and I'm not fecal incontinent, so odor wouldn't be a big issue for me, but it is for many. Likewise, since I change soon after wetting, wicking isn't a problem for me, but those who need (or like) to keep wearing a diaper after it's first become wet would have to deal with that issue.

I think there's probably a market for something with a plastic center and lightly breathable "clothlike" sides, but that would be tough to do in the manufacturing scale of most adult diapers since it would involve joining multiple films longitudinally, then keeping that aligned properly through the diaper-making machine. Not impossible, but I'd bet that none of the manufacturing plants for adult diapers have a machine with those capabilities. They might have this for baby diapers - my youngest is in high school, so it's been a while since I've looked at those. Developing a machine with those capabilities would be an expensive undertaking (that actually IS in my field of expertise!) and given that most high-performance adult diapers are manufactured on machines that are not dedicated to a single diaper line, it would be hard to justify the expense.

 

[Howl]

Fascinating thread, thank you @jellyjigger and @ltaluv particularly for the research, and thank you @Minih's for addressing my main (unasked) question about the more holistic lifecycle question.