Plastic vs. Bamboo Nappies: The True Financial and Environmental Cost
When it comes to choosing nappies for your baby, the decision is often framed around cost, convenience, and sustainability. But what is the real difference between a standard plastic disposable nappy and a more sustainable alternative like a bamboo nappy with a compostable corn starch liner from Mama Bamboo?
Let’s break it down in terms of both financial cost and environmental impact.
💰 Financial Cost: A Penny-by-Penny Comparison
Raw Materials and Production: At face value, standard plastic nappies are cheaper to produce. Bulk prices for traditional plastic nappies range from 0.03 to 0.05 per unit, compared to 0.14 to 0.19 for a bamboo/corn starch alternative (1). Plastic is cheap! Sustainably growing and harvesting bamboo and corn is significantly more expensive. Avoiding fertilisers and pesticides and using instead natural techniques and well managed forestry, all costs money.
Certifications: Auditing suppliers and being vigilant regarding practices and promises also costs money. Mama Bamboo audit SMETA assessments, ensuring good working practices and fair labour policies in all suppliers. We also maintain FSC, OEKO-TEX and B-Corp certifications ensuring our environmental promises are upheld at every stage of supply, production, and distribution. Maintaining our 119.1 Highest Scoring B-Corp Nappy Brand in the World title takes consistent effort. Certification management adds a penny to each Mama Bamboo nappy and we believe it's absolutely worth it as it gives our customer's peace of mind that we are doing the necessary work.
Marketing costs: Marketing experts guide businesses to spend between 8-12% of revenue on brand awareness and paid media. It's an unfortunate reality that without marketing, even the most sustainable, well meaning business will fail. And even well established brands must continue to shout about their products to gain new customers. In 2024 Mama Bamboo spent £81.6k on marketing. Procter & Gamble, the parent company of Pampers, in comparison spent an estimated $864 million on baby care advertising in 2024 (2) - approximately 1000x more in real terms.
Operational costs (Salaries and Overheads) are also heavier for multinational corporations, while smaller ethical brands like Mama Bamboo operate leaner, often prioritising ethical supply chains and direct-to-consumer models. Approximately 2.87p per nappy would be spent on bigger corporate structures (2); around 50% higher than Mama Bamboo's own operational costs.
Then there’s profit. P&G paid out $14 billion to shareholders in 2024, equating to 16.6% of its revenue—a cost ultimately baked into the price of each nappy (2). In contrast, brands like Mama Bamboo reinvest more of their revenue into innovation and reducing their environmental impact rather than delivering shareholder dividends.
The two types of nappies are just a few pennies apart when they finally reach the shelf but the make-up of that cost is significantly different. 78% of the cost of the Mama Bamboo nappy is driven by choosing better materials and engaging in better business practices. Whilst just 27% of the cost of a plastic nappy may be driven by materials, production and better business practices.
🌍 Environmental Cost: The Long-Term Impact
And then there's the unseen costs; the long term costs to the world in which our babies will grow up. The biggest threats to the planet and our health include carbon pollution, consumption of oil, microplastics in our food chain, and degrading soil and water quality. At Mama Bamboo we take this very seriously and have designed our baby nappies to be the most environmentally friendly disposable option we can create. We believe its not good enough to just do a little bit and use clever marketing to promote a less sustainable solution; we do not use "plant enhanced" materials, we do not hide plastic in the nappy liners where customers may not notice them, we do not cut corners in our carbon accounting and offsetting schemes, and we do not champion less-than-effective recycling methods because it shifts the burden from us to design and make better products in the first place. You can read our transparent Impact Statement here
Let's take a look at some of numbers behind the long term eco impacts of plastic v Mama Bamboo baby nappies:
Carbon Emissions: A standard plastic nappy emits 550–650 grams of CO₂e per use. In comparison, a bamboo and corn starch bio-film nappy emits only 200–350 grams. That’s a 40–65% reduction, driven largely by bamboo’s renewable nature and bio-film’s lower fossil fuel requirements. (3)
Oil Consumption: A typical plastic nappy uses 250 ml of crude oil to produce. A Mama Bamboo nappy slashes that to 50–100 ml—a 60–80% reduction. When considering the millions of nappies used daily, this difference adds up to staggering volumes of oil saved annually. (4)
Microplastic Pollution: As a plastic nappy breaks down it is capable of releasing 20–30 grams of microplastics into soil and water. In contrast, Mama Bamboo nappies—made from 80% compostable materials—release only 1.5–4 grams of microplastics, depending on how they're disposed. That’s up to 90% less pollution per nappy. (4)
Waste: One of the most concerning aspects of plastic nappies is their waste impact at end-of-life. They can take up to 500 years to break down or release huge amounts of carbon and toxic fumes if incinerated. Some companies have been trialling recycling nappy waste but this is carbon intense and over the last 4 decades, has proven to tackle less than 11% of all plastic waste produced. Recycling plastic into other plastics elongates the lifecycle but does not address the negative impact of producing oil based plastic in the first place and is not a circular solution. The plastic continues to exist in an alternate form and will once again end up as waste in future.
Mama Bamboo has been working with the University College London to establish the scientific-data to support the UK government to make the best circular waste management process, policy and infrastructure design decisions. The recent study results clearly indicate that composting plant-based products is the 'best' environmental option long term for nappy waste. (3)
Chemical Leaching: Conventional nappies often contain dyes, adhesives, VOCs, and SAPs (superabsorbent polymers) that leach harmful chemicals into groundwater. Eco-nappies significantly reduce or eliminate these components—especially when made from unbleached bamboo and chlorine-free pulp. (4)
🌱 Conclusion
We'll leave you to decide which nappy offers the most value.
Sources:
(1) Alibaba Market research - July 2025
(2) P&Gs Annual Shareholder Report 2024
(3) UCL's published LCA study 2025
(4) Chat GPT research - July 2025
