Hello,

I would like to start with cloth nappies/diapers but I'm not finding much in Switzerland. It might have something to do with the fact that I don't speak German. :-)

At the moment I have made a small order from a company in the UK but would love to buy locally if possible. Anyone know of any good sites/places to get some cloth nappies?

Thanks,
Amy

Hi Amy, Google Stoffwindeln on CH sites. There is a lot of info there if you can get through the German.

why cloth? To save cash?

Aldi do some nappies that are as good as, if not better than Pampers, about 15chf for 48 (i think).

I think it's for the environment. My wife did some of these things herself but our baby ate so well that they became too small quite quickly. So, of to Aldi and 3 for the price of 2 in Migros we went...

OK, I confess, i'm probably not the most eco friendly person on the planet

We used Pampers, Huggies, Millete for almost a year before we found out that Migros M-Budget diapers are as good as Pampers and pack is only 11.90 CHF.

Hi,

Don't forget that unlike in the UK where non-recyclable waste (e.g. disposable nappies) ends up in landfill, the Swiss burn it and use the energy to generate electricity.

If you buy cloth nappies, you have to take into consideration the environmental impact of washing (energy use, washing detergents etc etc).

At least that is what I tell myself when putting a new Pamper on the baby.

We tried various brands early on - Pampers, Millets (Migros own) and a couple of others and found Pampers gave the best results vis-a-vis leakage, fit etc. An important consideration when baby is still on milk-only and mainly liquid comes out of the exhaust pipe.

I must re-check out the Aldi and Denner brands as last time we looked our wee one was too small for either.

Cheers,
Nick

I agree that when thinking of environment, you have to take how much it cost to wash cloth diapers. And environmental impact of detergents is greater than one-time diapers.

For smaller kids it is better to use brands like Pampers, but for bigger kids I think that cheaper brands (Budget, Denner) work as well.

I reckon a few of our nappies could generate some serious power.

The future is in poo-clear energy.

Cheers,
Nick

My sister used eco-nappies and her house stunk!! A good way of keeping people away!! Less cup of tea/coffee to make - so good for the enviroment that way lol

We tried it once. For two days. Never gain - it is not pleasant. Our mothers only used terry nappies because pampers hadn't been invented .

Hi Amy,

I went with the cloth nappies for both my girls. Started with the big white squares that had to folded and fastened with pins, then when I discovered there were alternatives, I switched to them.

Incidentally, I still have them and they are my best cleaning cloths ever (so they were a darn good investment ).

there were two brands that I used then; "Kushies"/"Kooshies" depending on who's selling them and "Gio". There are loads of different ones available now. Some of the brands have quite funny names, "Bum genies" I think one brand was.

Sure, when we were going for long trips, or on holiday, I used the disposable ones as well, just think that in the long run, they are more expensive, plus I just preferred them.

I probably threw more disposable ones away than necessary, as when they peed, they smelt funny to me, I was forever sniffing and checking them to see what the pong was . With the cloth ones, I knew for sure what the pong was!!

One of my other main reasons to use them was, I had a nephew and neice who had Congenital Hip disease, my nephew wasn't diagnosed till long after he was walking. This led to him having many years of operations, being in a splay legged plaster cast up to his waist and as they made a botch of the operations, he grew up and lived with a rolling limp all his life.

His youger sister was diagnosed as a small baby and only had to have her nappy put on is a special "froglike" way, for a few months, with no problems ever since.

So having read and heard that cloth nappies, as they keep their little legs
further apart, helps keep the hips aligned, I had no hesitation in using them.

One thing to note, you will need to get bigger sizes for your cloth bound baby, the extra padding makes for at least one, to two sizes larger.

They are certainly expensive to buy out right, but if you go to any of the "Kinderkleider börse" you should be able to pick them up at a very reasonable price.
Otherwise, I am positive any of the baby shops will have at least some you can choose from.

I also found that for one or maybe two extra washes, there wasn't a lot more work involved than before, the system is so convenient now. I never needed to use anything special as far as sterilising/bleach or the like, just washed them seperately and they stayed white. They also never had any problems with nappy rash.

Okay, wish you all the best, once I am allowed back on the 'puter', I'll try and send a couple of links to some places with different names.

Ros.

According to a Swiss environmentalist I know the Swiss don't make electricity when burning garbage. They make heat and pipe it to homes, but since they started removing most cardboard and paper from the waste they need to add flammable stuff to burn the wastes, so rather than providing energy the burning needs energy. It is still better to use cloth, though probably the difference isn't as great as in the US or UK.

I would like to use cloth diapers, and am interested in the link someone gave earlier. I'm just wondering if anyone knows of any diaper/nappy cleaning services in the Zurich area. They have environmentally friendly diaper cleaning services in most large US cities, but I haven't been able to find any here.

Hi, there's a great little internet company based in my village which sells (and posts) a variety of modern cloth nappies. a friend uses them and thinks they're great.
address is www.babyfein.ch

Hi All,
This is first post. Yesterday (in Sion, Wallis) I bought 3 bundles (4 pockets in each bundle=10CHF) of pampers wipes at Denner. After moving from US this is an excellent offer I found in Switzerland.

I tried with my first, but it was too much work. Now with my second baby only doing messy ones every 4 days they are the best option for around the house.

I've use Popolini's. If you have a small baby (< 4 kgs) you'll need the ones that can be made smaller by poppers. They are CHF 20 for the non-adjustable and CHF 29 for the "ultra fit" adjustable from 3-15kgs. You can get them online, but I found going to Baby Waltz in Konstanz was the cheapest, and you can claim the 19% VAT back.

The diapers fasten by poppers and velcro and have a padded liner and you can by disposable liner sheets in a roll or box. You use a plastic wrapper outside. Migros sells these for around CHF 14. For a low-cost "try" you can also just use the 80x80cm stoffwindeln sheets from Migros that are commonly used as burp cloth, fasten in front with a safety pin and put a wrapper around them and the paper liner sheet inside for easy poop disposal. That's what our parents would have done.

I tried öko diapers and didn't like them at all. They were like paper and it felt like I was gift wrapping

I also found that winter is a better time to try cloth diapers since they dry faster with the central heating on.

Good luck!

Coop has 8 Nivea packs for CHF 23 at the moment too. No more in Zug though - I bought them out

I've heard from a fellow Swiss girlfriend that the Swiss are about 30 years behind (like many other things) in this area as well.. she will be ordering her cloth nappies from the USA or pick them up when she goes there...

I am looking for cloth diapers too. I used them with my daughter when she was a baby. Not only is it better for the environment, it is also better for the baby (less diaper rash and much softer). I question how good for the environment it is to burn the plastic that disposable diapers use. Anyway, we used prefolds when she was a newbie (the white cloth ones that you fold and cover) and when she got older we used Fuzzi Bunz because it was easier to tackle a moving target when they didn't have to lie down.

The brand someone else mentioned is Bum Genius and I've heard good things about them as well.

I did see a starter kit at the store that had that huge reorg sale in Oct and it had enough to diaper a newborn. I would think that most of the baby stores have some sort of selection. In the US, you can get prefolds at the Babies R Us but I looked at the Toys R Us in Dietlikon and didn't see any.

Oh, and prefolds make fantastic cleaning cloths when baby is done with them.