Lake Macquarie Council says the development of compostable disposable nappies would significantly cut the amount of waste going to landfill.
The Council says the New South Wales government needs to promote the production of such a product or introduce standards for the manufacturing of nappies.
Lake Macquarie is hoping to gain the support of other council at the Local Government conference this week.
Council’s Manager of Sustainability Alice Howe says nappies are currently going to landfill when they could be processed as organic material.
“So at the moment disposable nappies as you could imagine contain a fair bit of organic material, but we are not able to process them as organic and reuse them because essentially of the plastic component around those nappies,” she said.
“They are a significant waste stream and from out perspective we’re trying to divert as much waste as possible from landfill.
“So either through legislation or a voluntary scheme, we don’t really mind either way.
“We’d really be in a better position we feel if there was that sort of product on the market.
“At the moment there’s no fully compostable product on the market.
“There are a number of disposable nappies where only the actual tab is compostable and that is a significant problem for us from a waste processing perspective.”
