I put together a “Recycling Baby Stuff” guide the other day and I was surprised how few entries we had in our baby-stuff category.

The biggest surprising omission was cloth diapers/nappies – we’ve covered disposable ones but not the already more eco-friendly cloth version.

Obviously they’re reusable – that’s the point of them – but that doesn’t mean they’re reusable forever: they might wear out at critical points or the fabric become rough/otherwise unsuitable for baby-wear. And of course, the thing about babies is they have a tendency to grow and eventually learn how to use the toilet too – so unless they’re going to siblings or similar, there will be leftovers.

Old-school folded flat square ones obviously have as many reuses as an other square of fabric: one very close reuse might be to cut them up into smaller squares and use them as cloth wipes, a green alternative to toilet paper.

But what about shaped? Any other great reuses for flat ones?

Obviously the greener option is to use reuseable nappies but Katie emailed to say:

Did you know that the new disposable nappies are full of ‘swell gel’, it’s the same stuff you get from the garden centre to add to compost to retain moisture and costs around £5 a box.

I have started to re-use my grandson’s nappies, just the wet ones! Rinse them in the shower until all the ‘yellow’ has gone and they don’t smell.

Rip one end and squeeze them into your compost and hey presto, compost that doesn’t dry out. Ideal if you live in an area that has hose pipe bans every summer.

To be honest, I’d be worried about throwing all those petrochemicals into my compost heap because my compost heap is used pretty much entirely for my veg bed but I like the idea – but I could imagine using them at the bottom of flowers tubs in the garden.

Any other suggestions for re-uses? I suspect there will be some overlap with the sanitary towel suggestions but I think the size/shape might lead to some new ideas too.

(Photo by pascal79)