The Waste and Resources Action Programme has been asked by Defra to deliver a 2.6 million programme promoting the use of washable cotton nappies instead of disposable nappies.
”AHPMA’s role is to represent the interests of the disposable nappy industry. As such, it is not surprising that it has extracted those elements of the Environment Agency’s LCA that are helpful to the sector, while ignoring others. “
– Jennie Price, WRAP
WRAP's work with local authorities on re-usable nappies was attacked by the Absorbent Hygiene Products Manufacturers Association in a letter calling on councils to concentrate on building new waste plants rather than spending resources encouraging waste minimisation (see letsrecycle.com story).
The AHPMA's letter to councils came on the back of the publication of an Environment Agency life cycle analysis (LCA) report on the environmental impact of re-usable and disposable nappies.
WRAP chief executive Jennie Price accused the organisation of selecting only facts from the Agency report that were “helpful to the sector” in writing to local authorities.
Mrs Price said: “AHPMA’s role is to represent the interests of the disposable nappy industry. As such, it is not surprising that it has extracted those elements of the Environment Agency’s LCA that are helpful to the sector, while ignoring others, particularly the explicit acknowledgement in the LCA foreword that more work is needed on modern nappy types.”
Disappointed
Defending the importance of waste minimisation work, Mrs Price said that WRAP was “disappointed” at the AHPMA's call for nappy waste to be dealt with only by further investment in “expensive waste treatment facilities.
She said: “WRAP’s programme, on the other hand, is focused on waste minimisation, at the top of the waste hierarchy, and includes a strong emphasis on actually reducing environmental impact by encouraging parents to use and wash re-usable nappy products in a sensible way.”
Regarding criticisms over the auditing and evaluation of government-funded and council-funded “real nappy” schemes, Mrs Price said: “In common with all our other programmes, the results being delivered by real nappy schemes that receive WRAP support will be subject to proper evaluation and external validation, and will be publicly available.”
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A comment from Defra concerning the points raised by the AHPMA is expected early next week.
The Environment Agency life cycle analysis report that inspired the letter from the AHPMA itself drew criticisms for its “poor quality data”, with leading re-usable nappy campaigners the Women's Environmental Network calling it “seriously flawed” (see letsrecycle.com story).
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