The Nappy Alliance Case Study

Client Profile and Issue

The Nappy Alliance is a trade body of 11 independent providers of reusable nappies. The Alliance was established to promote the use of reusable nappies with their concerns being two-fold; environmental benefits of landfill reduction and unnecessary energy use, and cost savings to new parents.

Our Strategy

Whitehouse have acted as both the secretariat and public affairs advisers to The Nappy Alliance, a campaign which has gone from strength to strength over a period of several years. The campaign has been based on issues of waste and costs savings. After numerous rounds of meetings with key Parliamentarians and officials, support for the promotion of reusables has grown, kept buoyant through parliamentary activity which ensures that all inquiries and consultations from waste reduction to sustainable development to NHS procurement are made to consider the impact of disposable nappies and the benefits of reusables.

Outcome

The Alliance have achieved sustained support for reusable nappies, securing dialogue with senior officials in the Department for the Environment responsible for both the Waste Strategy Review and the Waste Implementation Programme, as well as with Ministers in the Department of Health responsible for information which is made available to new parents. Success relating to these include the specific identification of disposable nappies within the waste stream by the Department for the Environment and many Local Authorities in their waste action plans. In addition there has been the inclusion of the benefits of reusable nappies in the Department of Health publication ‘Birth to Five’, given free to all new mothers.

The Alliance also continues to develop the campaign looking at wider issues including disproportionate import duties on reusable nappies, as they are determined as children’s clothing rather than sanitary products, as well as looking to work with the DfES on encouraging pre-school facilities to allow reusable nappies to be used.

The Nappy Alliance also has a strong relationship with the Waste Resources and Action Programme, a government funded body which has received £2.2 million to promote reusables across the UK.