I write to encourage readers with babies to use cotton or "real" nappies.

Eight million nappies are thrown away daily in the UK alone and these will take several hundred years to decompose.

Half the rubbish in a one-baby family is made of disposable nappies.

Cotton nappies look cute and are really not the drag they are made out to be.

They generate a bit more washing, which is a small price to pay when the average savings after using real nappies for a first child is £600.

Every £1 spent on "disposables" costs the taxpayer 10p to deal with their disposal. Babies in real nappies also seem to potty-train more easily and earlier.

The gels and chemicals that make up disposable nappies' absorbent layer are not subject to government control (nonylphenol ethoxylate, an oestrogen mimic linked to sex changes in fish and dropping sperm count in men, is only recently being phased out of disposables).

All the babies I know, including my own, are more than happy in their cotton nappies.

-Kat Macmillan, Whitehawk Road, Brighton