The government of Belgium’s Flemish region, also called Flanders, has set aside €30 million for a variety of environmental projects, including recycling of disposable nappies, secretary of state for poverty reduction Zuhal Demir has said. “If we can manage to roll out a recycling project that gives nappies a second life, we can make the mountain of waste even smaller,” Demir said.

An analysis by the Flemish waste management agency Ovam found 11.8 per cent of household waste, or an average of 13 kg per resident per year, consists of hygiene waste, including nappies and incontinence materials. And that does not include the nappies used in pre-school, which form part of business waste. In all, nappies amount to about 65,000 tonnes a year.

Almost all of that waste goes for incineration, forming part of a mountain of undifferentiated waste the European Union aims to reduce by 25 per cent by 2030.

To begin to move in that direction, Flanders has €30 million for a series of recycling projects for not only disposable nappies but also other waste products like asbestos and plastics, according to Belgian media reports.

Now Ovam is to work together with the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) to look into the recycling of disposable nappies. They will be looking closely at Elsinga, a Dutch company that is already recycling, processing 5,000 tonnes a year through its reactor near Nijmegen, with the aim to reach a throughput of 15,000 tonnes.

Disposable nappies, unlike their older cloth counterparts, are made of several different materials, and the composition is not standardised.

One type contains more paper pulp, another more super absorbers or plastic and another uses biodegradable plastics. And the waste package comes with wet-wipes and collecting bags mixed in. The contents of the nappies make the job even more challenging, according to Elsinga.