Cotton
Most natural materials are absorbent, and most absorbent materials are natural! It’s to do with the plant fibres – their job is to transport things like water around, whereas synthetics are long chains of molecules, not tubes.
Some of the absorbent materials used in modern cloth nappies (MCNs) -
Cotton –
This isn’t really ‘modern,’ it’s the old faithful. Cheap, but not as absorbent as other fabrics. It is generally used for cheap flats available from chain stores such as K-mart and older nappies as a terry (with loops) or flannelette. Some newborn nappies use it because on a newborn you are generally changing frequently and flannelette is thin so makes trim nappies, and it’s not economical to make expensive nappies that will only fit for a few weeks! It is also common in mass produced nappies.
Cotton is reasonably absorbent and easy to care for, but it tends to go hard after a few washes. It can be softened fairly easily by using vinegar in the wash, drying it in the shade or using a dryer, and cotton terry flats can be worked extremely hard. I have some that are 4 years old and still going – I don’t care what they look like because I only use them at home.
Depending on where it is grown cotton can be a very environmentally unfriendly crop. It requires a lot of water, which is fine in monsoonal countries such as India and China, but not in Australia. There are a lot of insects that eat the cotton bolls or fibres so it often uses a lot of pesticides, although there is an increasing amount of organic cotton becoming available. For agricultural products including fabrics look for SKAL certification to check it is organic, this is for the EU but many international producers have it. There is some ethically produced cotton from places like India where community businesses are growing it, but for other cotton there may be a trade-off between environmental friendliness, work conditions, and local production.
Overall I have used a lot of cotton in my nappying, but only with flats around the house. With the variety of MCN that are available I would go for something more absorbent or durable when I want reliability.
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Categories: Fabrics
