Kimberly-Clark Australia develops pilot composting project from used diapers

With around 60% market share and the dominance of the Huggies brand in Australia, Kimberly-Clark is aware that high consumption also contributes to a serious environmental problem: diaper disposal. Annually, 1.5 billion used diapers go to landfills in the country, from all industry players.

According to Belinda Driscoll, managing director of Kimberly-Clark Australia, there is currently a promising – but still early stage – test to turn soiled nappies into compost, using an anaerobic decomposition process, in partnership with the national science agency CSIRO. It will be a long road, but the initial steps demonstrate that the process works.

Since July, the company has been collecting soiled diapers from a daycare center in Mount Barker and testing the process at a site near Langhorne Creek owned by childcare giant G8 Education. Kimberly-Clark has a supply contract with the education network, which has 440 centers across Australia.

So far, around 1.6 tons of soiled diapers have been collected in the Kimberly-Clark program, in which urine and feces are treated the same in the process.

Dirty diapers are separated into pulp and plastic. The pulp represents about 40% of the diaper is destined for composting, while the remaining 60% of plastic is kept aside with ongoing studies for possible recycling with a group called APR Plastics.

The decomposition process is being overseen by Peats Soil and Garden Supplies in a location known to be a wine country in SA. To help break down, the fiber and pulp of diapers are mixed with food waste and high-sugar drinks.

For Driscoll, Huggies has grown into a big brand, and both parents and daycare operators are behind the strong demand. The executive said that 95% of babies use disposable diapers, with convenience being an important factor. “Families and day care really depend on them,” she pointed out.

A program in Toronto, Canada, which turns diaper fiber into compost, has been running for years, which, for the executive, “shows that these programs can be implemented on a large scale”.

The schedule for the next stages of the Kimberly-Clark project is still being developed by the company, but the aim is to try to implement the program across Australia.