6 picks · vetted plastic-free
The best plastic-free baby wipes
A standard baby wipe is a sheet of polyester or polypropylene. Cotton cloth and wood-pulp wipes clean the same and leave no plastic behind.
A baby goes through thousands of wipes before potty training, and almost all of them are woven plastic. The sheet in a standard pack is polyester or polypropylene. Flush one and it comes through the sewer intact, which is why the packet tells you not to. In landfill it sits there shedding fibres for decades.
There are two ways out of that. Cloth wipes are far cheaper over a couple of years: a dozen squares of organic cotton flannel, a squirt bottle of water by the change table, and the same wash load as the diapers. For the days when laundry is not going to happen, a disposable wipe made from wood pulp instead of polyester does the job and breaks down afterwards. Both are below, and nothing stops you keeping a stack of each.
What else goes on the change table
Cloth wipes make most sense beside cloth diapers, because it turns into one wash load instead of two. The Coyuchi hooded towel and mitt set carries the same organic cotton through to bath time.
Common questions
- Are baby wipes made of plastic?
- Most of them are. The wipe itself is a nonwoven sheet of polyester or polypropylene, and the pouch and snap lid add more on top. A few brands now use wood pulp or viscose for the sheet, and those are the disposables worth buying.
- What is the best plastic-free alternative to baby wipes?
- Organic cotton cloth wipes, wet with plain water from a squirt bottle at the change table. Somewhere between 12 and 24 covers most households on a wash every couple of days, and the whole stack costs about what two months of disposables cost.
- Are plant-based or biodegradable wipes actually plastic free?
- Read the sheet material rather than the front of the pack. Wipes sold as plant-based sometimes still carry a polyester scrim for strength. The ones that state 100% viscose, wood pulp or cotton are the plastic-free ones, and FSC certification tells you where that pulp came from.
- What do you wet cloth wipes with?
- Water, in a squirt bottle by the change table, so you wet one at a time and the rest of the stack stays dry. Some people put a spoonful of castile soap or a drop of oil in the bottle for the harder changes.
- How do you wash cloth baby wipes?
- They go in with the diapers or the towels on a warm wash. Leave out the fabric softener, which coats cotton and stops it absorbing. Line drying keeps them soft and costs nothing.
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