Are Cloth Nappies Becoming Fast Fashion?
What is Fast Fashion?
Firstly, I will deal with the question “What is fast fashion?”
I was reading this blog https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/ about what fast fashion is and found their description to be perfect.
“The idea is to get the newest styles on the market as fast as possible, so shoppers can snap them up while they are still at the height of their popularity and then, sadly, discard them after a few wears.”
I know that this description will resonate with some cloth nappies users who are reading my blog as it certainly resonates with me.
How are Cloth Nappies Becoming Fast Fashion?
People who follow NappyNoos on Instagram will have heard me talking about why I only have five prints in my ‘Baby Mine’ collection and why my next collection will again only be five prints (plus an extra charity print). For those of you who have not seen me talking about this before I will explain further below.
As a cloth bum mum myself I know only too well how hard it is to resist a new nappy print. I ended up buying more nappies than I needed which means that I have some sitting in Macy’s room that I never use. I have sold some preloved but I did end up rather addicted to buying nappies. Even now I find it so hard to resist some prints.
I have bought nappies purely for their prints, used them a few times and then cast them aside. Sometimes I come across a nappy I forgot I had!
What about NappyNoos?
When I started NappyNoos I wanted to encourage more people to switch to cloth and avoid disposable nappies. They are so much more eco friendly and save millions of nappies from landfill every day.
I wanted to design an absorbent and reliable nappy so people have a good experience when trying cloth, making it more likely they will stick it out. I feel this has been achieved and I am so happy that people are loving their Pooket Nappies.
I was however very conscious that constantly mass producing new prints was counter productive to being eco friendly and was tempting people to buy nappies when they don’t really need them.
I do not believe that there needs to be a constant feed of new nappy prints being made available as not only does it encourage people to buy them when they don’t need them, but also it is not eco friendly. It does fit into the fast fashion narrative.
What Can We Do About It?
I will admit it is difficult to find a balance. As a business it is important to retain customers and releasing new prints obviously helps with that but at the same time I don’t want to be counter productive to being eco friendly.
Some people will agree with me, others will not and I make no criticism of you if you disagree. This world would be boring if we all has the same opinions after all.
I do feel that cloth nappies are becoming close to meeting the definition of fast fashion and I want to assure people that NappyNoos is committed to sustainability and will not mass produce huge varieties of print.
I am aware that not everyone will be happy with such a limited choice in prints offered by NappyNoos but I feel it is one thing I can do to reduce the carbon footprint of my business as much as possible.
Conclusion
Our climate is now at crisis point. I recently saw an article about clothing ending up in landfill, I don’t want the same thing to happen to cloth nappies.
I cannot encourage people to switch to cloth nappies to help the environment unless I am also contributing to helping the environment. It would be hypocritical of me to preach about the eco credentials of cloth nappies whilst simultaneously contributing to them becoming as problematic to the environment as fast fashion is.
So what do you think? Is there a danger that cloth nappies are becoming fast fashion or do you feel variety and the constant release of new prints is good as it encourages people to keep using cloth?
