ethical shopping for babies

I am so impressed with these nappies. I am a very busy person by nature and am always out and about so wanted a nappy that would be easy to use on the hop. With these nappies I only need to take out a spare cover (you can re-use the cover during the day as long as it is not soiled) and about three/four inserts for a full day out (my boy is 2).
I bought both the bamboo and the stay dry inserts, but have to say I find the stay dry ones a little easier as they are less fiddly with a wriggler esp. when changing a no.2. Both are super absorbent though and I have never had a leak, and I even use them during the night.
Both are easy to wash and dry really quickly because they are not large and bulky.
The thing that I like the best about them though is that they are so economical. Because they are one-size fits all, you dont have to buy more nappies as your child gets older, they are compact and the cover is re-usable so you are washing less and the product itself is relatively cheap.
I am really looking forward to using them with my second child who is due in May. I think they will look great under her little summer dresses.
I would highly recommend these nappies to anyone!
Claire

I’m so happy with the flip. The cover is made from a great material – much thinner and flexible/stretchable than I thought, but still very sturdy and soft. They seem to be cut on the large size – they fit our son and though he has out grown some other birth-to-potty nappies but there is plenty of room for him still in these. I do wonder if that means they might not fit a very little wee baby, but they fold down and because of the unique material of the cover, maybe it wouldn’t be a problem. They certainly seem to be a slim fit on him (though not super-slim) and we have not had a single problem with leaks of any sort. I was worried about only using the one insert as we normally have a booster in on his bum genius v3s but as I said, haven’t had a single problem yet.

I’ve tried both the organic and the stay dry inserts and both seem to work equally well. They both fit into the cover perfectly and stay put when on. For the most part they also stay put when we are chaning our son, even though he is quite a wriggler, but it does take a little bit more concentration/dexterity so I’m going to stick with pockets for the child minder. The stay dry inserts however dry incredibly fast and don’t need to be folded, so unless you are after organic in particular, then I would go for the stay dry for simplicity and fast drying. (That said, compared to most nappies I think the organic insert is pretty fast drying and quite simple as well.)

The inside of the insert is wipe-able, so we’ve taken advantage of the fact that you can swap just the insert when changing the nappy. It makes the change take a little bit longer, but is still very handy. We used these while travelling and found them to be great travel nappies even without the disposable inners. (I hand washed the inserts which was a bit eck :& but still, I felt like because the construction of these is so simple, I could really tell that everything was clean and fresh when done.)

I think the one down side is the colours. I love the brightness of these, but I’ve tried to get gender neutral colours in the past and that wasn’t really an option here. That said, I did get some of the pink ones for my son (I was thinking if a have a daughter next she’s going to have a lot of blue to wear so why can’t my son wear a bit of pink?) and I think because the colour is so strong, it’s not a girly pink, if you know what I mean.

I have had my new Flip stay dry nappies for a couple of weeks now and love them!
I have 9 month twin boys and they are both really big for their age and these nappies look like they’ll last the distance with quite a high rise for taller babies and lots of adjustment ability with all the coloured snaps!
They are amazingly absorbant for how slim they are and they are my new favourites as they fit great under the twins clothes
They are really soft against their wee bums and are just so easy to use!
Just awaiting the arrival of the organic ones I have ordered and also can’t wait till new colours come out too cause i’ll no doubt buy more

After 10 months of using Pampers and promising ourselves we would change to non-disposables as soon as baby went through fewer nappies, we finally took the plunge last month. We intended to buy the normal Bumgenius as my friends use them, but we came across the Flip concept and liked it.

It is an expensive inital outlay by the time you buy the outers, the inners, nappy bucket and paper liners (like Iona we use these to make things easier to clean and it also protects the liners from nappy creams). But we hope it will ultimately be cheaper over the long term. Our baby is 11 months and is on the second (of three) dome setting and there is plenty of space widthways as well, so there is a lot of room to grow (admittedly he is of slight build).

So far, so good. Aside from the usual pros of using non-disposables (cost and environmentally friendly) we are finding that they compare favourably with disposables both in terms of fit and convenience.

My friends found the Bumgenius nappies were quite bulky. Because the Flip outer shell is so thin there is no such issue here. The liners are not much bulkier than a single disposable and are easily transportable (I’m not so fond of the idea of carting around a number of dirty nappies mind).

The liners are extremely absorbant, although I think disposables have the edge in this regard as I have to change my boy a little more frequently now. That’s clearly attributable to the chemicals and it’s been quite a revelation seeing how much my boy was wetting. He is suffering from a little more nappy rash than before which we’re hoping will improve as we get better at changing him more frequently.

The outer shell can get a bit dirty on the edges as the inner liner shifts around, but the shell does a great job of containing mess. This compares favourably to disposables. We had a few problems with leaking disposables, but admittedly this was probably more to do with incorrect fitting thanks to a squirming baby. The Flip dome system ensures the fit is always right (hence no leaks), although the squirming baby issue remains. (I’m not sure how they would perform with an unweaned baby where everything is fluid).

As the other posters noted, the shell does not need to be washed straight away. It can be wiped clean and then reused until you are ready to wash it. This massively reduces the laundering load (and the need for multiple shells), especially if you are happy to reuse shells with slight soiling on the edges for a while longer. As for the inners, they wash well and dry fast (although we use the dryer as per the instructions), but you need a lot of them. We are going through about 5-6 a day and are currently washing them every other day becuase we only brought 8, so we clearly need to buy more as doing so many washes is not efficient.

Probably my only complaint is that the liners stain and as you are not supposed to use laundry additives, it seems it will not be possible to keep them pristine white with the help of whiteners. Maybe in the summer, a bit of sun will bleach them. This is just aesthetics though.

All in all, we are pleased with these nappies. We find them sufficently comparable to disposables in terms of ease of use and convenience to make the conversion easy. Most of all we are delighted to no longer be contributing to the plastic landfill.