This January, the French art chain Arte hosted the screening of the documentary Couchorama by Jacqueline Farmer. The DVD should be shown in the Basque villages that are in the midst of the debate on waste from incinerators. Very good. Without waiting for someone to translate it, we summarize it here.

Jacqueline just had a son. As the weeks go by, the household container will be quickly filled. Modern bumps perfectly absorb urine and Thieu's droppings, but... where they go afterwards. Jacqueline estimates that during the three years of autonomy the child will soak 6,000 packages. A ton of garbage!

In a single generation, the environment has today suffered a huge problem with what is one of the symbols of progress. How did they manage before? Do you have an alternative mother to the Middle Ages? Jacqueline immerses herself in the research.

Marion Donovan, a woman who pioneered today’s bumps, has been one of the women who has forgotten her name. Later, the engineers of the multinational Procter & Gamble designed another in 1956, first with sawdust, then they have been sophisticating the materials. In Europe it would spread everywhere in the 1970s.

For feminist writer Elisabeth Badinter – her latest work Le conflit, femme et la mère – the diapers to use and throw have been a miraculous breakthrough, taking away heavy work, almost a revolution to the size of the contraceptive pill. Okay, Farmer says, but comfort has a problem: It takes over 300 years to dissolve!

The lump carries within the skin polyethylene a highly absorbent material: sodium polyacrylate. You can swallow a lot of fluid without dripping around it and hold the child's skin on the ground. In return, the researcher Michel Vert explained that the recycling of these special synthetic absorbers cannot even be thought of today.

Manufacturers are trying to improve the waste problem. They have slimmed down and greatly lightened the packages, but ... to do so they have replaced the small biodegradable cellulose they had before with resistant polyacrylates. “We’re working on solutions up to 10 years,” they say to Jacqueline at Procter & Gamble.

“But in 10 years France is going to accumulate the bulge that weighs 1,200,000 elephants,” the journalist said. 50% of the non-recyclable waste generated in a family with a child in Europe is diapers. In Gipuzkoa some cases have been detected in the municipalities that carry out door-to-door waste collection. Difficult solution.

What does pediatric diaper say? Experts like Berry Brazelton say that children are denied the possibility of learning from older adults by artificially removing them clean and dry in the lump. Because the child has to learn. Multinationals’ calculations go in the opposite direction, they promote diapers at 8 years and later, packages of

“learning to control” the works, “nocturnal”, “pijama-fardelas”… The right to choose?

Now Procter & Gamble and company are making a huge effort to spread the formula in China, India, Nigeria, Egypt, etc. The special efforts they make in China are noteworthy. In many countries, the argument has been settled with the Chinese, who have always had a more normal relationship with the work, on the basis of cacao and urine phobia. Most Chinese children still wear kaidangku pants, cut between the thighs, to get out in any corner when you reach the majority.

Consultant Nielsen has prepared manufacturers with an argument to change the habits of the Chinese: “With our pamper your child will sleep better all night, will be quieter and during the day will get better results in school.” There is always a team of sociologists or psychologists that corroborate the finding of clinical research.

While the teeth of the multinationals stretch with the millions that have sacrificed with the changes of customs of the citizens of the middle classes of China or Nigeria, in many other places public institutions account for the costs of change.

According to the British Government, 800,000 tonnes of dirty packages are piled up each year, enough to fill 8 such as the Wembley stadium, whose management costs £67 million. Some towns and cities have therefore begun to promote reusable diapers. Just as they have started in some towns in Gipuzkoa. Couchoraman has focused on the Lewisham in London, which has been second.

In some nurseries, all children use it, for example, those from Islington in London. They have had to make the way to change the habits of parents and workers.

The opening of the packages has difficulties. People who for 30 years have gotten used to how easy we don't like complications. One more job, one cleaning. More biases, not the smallest, the mother or the mother-in-law will ask you if you're crazy to want to go back for 30 years.

Elisabeth Badinter is against feminism. Who will clean up these reusable packages? Men don't, one more job for women. It seems to him that the invention of radical environmentalism once again impedes women ' s autonomy.

Couchorama will also not forget two other alternatives. One is the biodegradable disposable diapers of the company Nature Babe Care. Disposable and non-compostable in full. Organisations should set up composting processes for their treatment or biogas generation. Jacqueline Farmer has also talked to people working on the natural hygiene of children, who without any kind of lump try to naturally demonstrate control of their needs. However, in general, you have to choose either between packages or disposable detergents.

Meanwhile, the marketing of Procter & Gamble, Kimberly Clark and other multinationals do not let the alternatives go. Any new mother will receive at home, with the clinic data, the advertising of the products. Even more serious: in clinics there is no access to anyone other than the multinationals, and most of the time we continue with what we've tried first.

Some claim the sacred right to choose not to change it. Nasso Christou, director of the Islington nursery, responded to them: “How far does our right to choose go? When we know that our decision will harm future generations, do we have the right to choose it?”