a company markets fully recycled baby diapers, a world first

In Japanese cities that don’t have incinerators, diapers go directly to landfills. Unicharm researchers have worked on the subject to develop recyclable diapers.

A Japanese company has just put fully recycled baby diapers on sale at the end of April. This is a first in the world and could be of interest to many countries which are concerned about the accumulation of disposable diapers in their landfills or incinerators.

These are complex products that are extremely difficult to reprocess. There are thousands of tonnes more every year. Many companies are thinking about the subject of recyclable diapers. Unicharm is the first in the world to market a product that has been validated by experts and authorities. The group calls it horizontal recycling, because it uses used disposable diapers to recreate perfectly clean new disposable diapers.

It’s a fairly complex process. There are several steps. The used layers are first dried then crushed to be transformed into a sort of pulp which will then follow a disinfection treatment called ozonation. An extremely effective process, which destroys all bacteria and allows you to recover clean pulp to reconstitute impeccable layers. They have no odor and are as white as those made with virgin components. For the moment Unicharm only sells its recycled diapers in supermarkets in southern Japan, near the site where it has set up a large collection system.

Many Japanese cities are a bit overwhelmed by layers. It’s not because there are a lot of babies. There are fewer and fewer of them every year, but because there are more and more very elderly people in the country who need to wear them. An adult diaper is bigger and heavier. In Osaki City, Kagoshima Prefecture, for example, authorities now estimate that 20 percent of the waste collected from individuals is used diapers. In cities that don’t have incinerators, these diapers go directly to landfills. It is to help these municipalities that Unicharm asked its researchers to work on the fully recyclable layer.

These recycled diapers, in a baby version, were put on sale at the end of April in around thirty supermarkets in Kagoshima prefecture. It is a little early to measure the state of demand, but on social networks, people do not seem shocked by the process. On the other hand, there are comments on the price of these diapers. Due to the cost of reprocessing, they are a little more expensive than 100% virgin diapers. And in Japan, where purchasing power continues to decline, this makes families a little upset.