Dubbed  'The Nappy Lady' during a TV interview some years ago, Kate Meads, believes it's due to greater awareness of the environmental impacts and cost-savings cloth nappies offer as well as the annual New Zealand Cloth Nappy Week, now in its fifth year.

"Dating back to the 70's and earlier, cloth nappies have symbolised the hard work of being a mother, all that soaking, scrubbing, washing folding and pins," says Kate.

"However, the modern cloth nappy is nothing of the sort and while usage of them used to be the exception it is now becoming more mainstream."

Cloth Nappy Week starts on next Monday and is a week-long celebration, hosted up and down the country, of the wonders of the modern cloth nappy - and all parents of littlies are invited!

The week is run co-operatively by all New Zealand cloth nappy importers and sellers and The Nappy Lady, and combines a road show a huge number of events, dozens of prize-giveaways and so much more, all in the name of getting the word about cloth nappies out to parents of young children.

The Nappy Lady will be conducting council workshops and offering BambinoMio and TotsBots cloth nappies as giveaways.  Wainhouse Distribution is also giving away during the week five Motorola MBP36's baby monitors, five Lascal Buggy Board Maxis and five Mustela Nursery Set up Packs.

Karyn Cray, General Manager of leading cloth nappy retailer NappyDays, has also been working in the industry for the last seven years to get the country wise to the benefits of the modern cloth nappy.

"Some people still think of cloth nappies as enormous white monstrosities, held together with safety pins, which our grandmothers and mothers had to wash separately and laboriously bleach to keep them looking clean," she says.

"The modern cloth nappy could not be further from that product," she says."Today's cloth nappies are very easy to chuck in the wash, they come in a range of shapes, sizes and brands, and there are no safety pins required!"

At the household level, cloth nappies save families around $3,000 per child if used until a child is around 2.5 years.

Even more importantly, the use of cloth nappies diverts hundreds of thousands of non-biodegradable disposables from the country's landfills.

Cloth Nappy Week 2014 aims to celebrate the 30% per cent of families that currently use the product, and to grow that number, by educating people on the vast array of benefits using cloth nappies confers to families and society.

"It is really brought home to me when I talk to some of the families that have switched from disposables to cloth nappies and can see such an immediate benefit to their household budgets and their waste management,"  says Karyn.

"Many also say there is nothing better than seeing those lovely cloth nappies drying on the line, smelling and looking great, and knowing they are doing a great favour to both their babies and the environment."

-ENDS-