Context

In a society where sustainability is becoming more and more relevant, disposable single use diapers are still used by 95% of parents. Every baby uses approximately 4000 diapers in their first 2,5 years of life. This is close to 160 kilos of material that is used once and then discarded. As the use of disposable diapers only increases with the increasing number of births yearly worldwide, the amount of material needed to sustain the diaper market is enormous. The Future Diaper Project initiated this research with as the main goal to develop a more sustainable disposable diaper. Can disposable diapers be designed to have lower environmental impact, reduced material use and be made renewable? To prevent the design of unusable futuristic designs an extra focus was placed on user experience. Currently disposable diapers can be named as the essence of convenience, low effort and easy disposal. Can a new diaper both be more sustainable while preserving this user experience? This project proposes a new concept to revolutionize the future of the disposable diaper market.

Approach

The main approach of this project lies in the classic double diamond model, consisting of research & analysis (discover), define, conceptualization (develop) and deliver (embodiment and final product). The research and analysis phase allowed the creation of a clear vision, list of requirements and provided a strong foundation for ideation. Through extensive desk research, talking with parents, observation and analysis of impacts through creating a diaper model (Excel) with the material database of Granta Edupack (previously CES). With a clear path ahead created by the analysis, ideation of concepts was started, generating various ideas that could reduce diaper impact. Emphasis lied on embodiment to validate concepts, as well as analyzing impact with the previously created diaper impact model. Implementing low-fidelity prototypes combined with the numerical approach of the model proved to deliver time efficient insights and results.

Results

The result of this project is a user-tested, new diaper system, that potentially reduces the CO₂ emission with 63% and the water use with 18%. The product combines three approaches of making a diaper more sustainable: reusing parts, reducing material use and changing the material composition to biobased materials. The final concept reuses parts of the diaper that most often do not get dirty in use. It combines this with separating day and night capacity of absorbency. The final step taken in this concept is the material composition, which is changed to be almost completely biobased. By being both reusable as well as disposable the diaper stays close to the convenience level parents of today count on, giving them an alternative that is more sustainable without having to compromise on convenience. The end result is a biobased and reusable and disposable diaper system stripped of all unnecessary material, that reduces environmental impact without compromising the user experience.