Council Incentives to use cloth

Denbighshire where I was living through most of my pregnancy do £75 of vouchers to spend on pretty much anything cloth nappy related, Wrexham where I live now do NOTHING

Just thinking out loud. As dedicated clothies, money off vouchers feel a great idea but if they were insufficient to convert people, perhaps pulling funding for that particular scheme was the right thing to do? We want our councils to spend our tax money wisely. However, I would guess that the problem is its not becuase they didn't work they were axed.

If the money was put into an alternative scheme, what would we all think it should be?

I would argue that nappy libraries and Nappuchino style presentations at antenatal classes would be a good thing. What do you all think? I think they should be compulsory frankly. People are much more open minded when they see nappies and hear the experiences of people who use them. Then they could be followed up by a voucher scheme when people actually had an idea of how/why to spend the money. Not much of a saving for the council in that plan though! just an increase in provision! Equally, council tax rebates for landfill are an excellent incentive (I think) because they could be relatively small but would be attractive to many people (sorry to think like the tax man!)

Anyone else?

The problem with council tax rebates for cloth nappy users is that it seems unfair to small child-less households - they don't get a rebate and they don't throw away disposables. Charging to dispose of disposables may work better - perhaps via a tax on the purchase price, hit them in the pocket!!

It is a difficult one. It does frustrate me here where people are taking up the free starter kits with no intention of actually using them and then selling them for profit. I think some sort of free loan scheme/library would probably be better then give people some cashback to actually by something that suits them.

We get 3 payments of £10 at 6 weeks, 12months and 18 months for continuous cloth use. So even though Lockie has been in cloth for a year we can't claim it because he wasn't in them since birth. The council advertise it as being the money they save from not having to send those nappies to landfill.

Spending some money bringing hv and mw up to date on modern cloth might also be an idea. My hv asks me questions. How is she supposed to help other Mums?

i think something should be done with the rubbish side of things - if parents had to put disps into seperate yellow clinical waste bags by law and then pay for their removal that would be the biggest incentive going

then the councils could say pay £x for using disps or just use cloth instead and provide contacts of people like us who actually know about cloth. - they need to use dedicated addicts though as when i was in 1st trimester there was an info session at hosp and woman there only used meos and not at night due to absorbancy and looked at me oddly when i told her i already used bg v 2.0 and could have told her meos wouldn't last all night unboosted.

mw at antenatal used cloth on her own kids (tots, nb if memory serves) and briefly passed round the sample bag but if i didn't really know i don't know if it would have converted, but 1 mum 2be did order a fluffle for quick drying ask then asked mw at next session about snapin booster folding.

My name is listed with Coleraine council (with my phone and email) assuming that anyone would bother contacting the council asking questions. For them it is so they have someone locally that uses cloth that is willing to share their knowledge, for me, well just the excitement of cloth.

something like that rae is free and a great idea, but that also takes someone who knows what they are doing to pass on the info

Yes as Babyroo says it's £30 here in Kent. I got a payment for both my boys before they were born, you just had to supply a due date!

Sarah

Where in Kent are you Sarah?