16 August 2026 · Veronica Chi

Business & Product Director · Mum of two

Cloth or Disposable in Singapore?

The cloth-versus-disposable conversation usually arrives with more moral weight than it deserves, and it is almost always conducted using numbers from countries with tumble dryers and cold tap water. The Singapore version of the question is genuinely different, and worth doing properly.

The honest case for cloth

• Cost, over time and over more than one child. The upfront outlay is significant; the per-use cost approaches zero and the same set can serve a second baby.
• No landfill contribution per change, which in a country that incinerates its waste is a legitimate consideration.
• No absorbent gel against the skin, which some parents prefer on principle even where there is no evidence of harm.
• You will never make a 10pm run to a pharmacy because you have run out.

The honest case against, here specifically

This is where imported advice falls down, because every objection below is climate-specific or housing-specific.

• Drying. This is the real obstacle. In 80% ambient humidity, thick cotton or bamboo inserts can take a day and a half to dry on a rack, and a rotation that assumes overnight drying will fail by the third day. A dryer, or a service, changes the calculation entirely.
• Space. A cloth rotation needs somewhere to store clean stock, somewhere to hold soiled stock, and somewhere to dry. In many flats that is three places you do not have.
• Smell. Ammonia develops faster in warm, humid conditions, so soiled storage is less forgiving here than in a temperate climate.
• Labour, and whose it is. If a helper or a grandparent is doing the day-to-day care, this decision materially changes their workload and should be made with them rather than announced to them.
• Heat. Cloth diapers are bulkier and warmer against the skin, which in this climate is a genuine comfort trade-off rather than a footnote.

The hybrid most people actually land on

Very few families here run cloth exclusively, and the ones who are happiest tend not to have tried. A mixed approach removes the failure points without discarding the benefits.

• Cloth at home during the day, when a leak costs you nothing but a change.
• Disposables overnight, where absorbency matters most and a 3am cloth change is a very bad trade.
• Disposables when out, when travelling, and for whoever is doing the care that day if that is their preference.
• Disposables entirely for the first six weeks. Nobody needs a new laundry system in the fortnight after giving birth.

If you are going to try cloth

• Buy a small trial set of two or three styles before committing. Fit varies as much as it does with disposables.
• Be realistic about drying capacity before you buy the rotation, not after. Count the rack space you actually have.
• Plan for roughly 20 to 24 diapers for a full-time newborn rotation, which assumes washing every other day.
• Agree the routine with everyone who will use it, in advance and out loud.

Where we stand

We make bamboo textiles and are developing bamboo disposables, so we are hardly disinterested. But the decision that matters is not cloth versus disposable — it is whether the system you choose survives contact with a real week, in a real flat, with the people actually doing the work. A cloth rotation abandoned in month two costs more than disposables and considerably more goodwill.

Questions parents ask

Keep reading

• Bamboo vs Conventional Diapers
• How Many Diapers Will You Actually Need?
• Diaper Bins and Smell in the Tropics

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