In three rural villages in Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces, mothers were hanging shopping bags of used disposable nappies from the trees. When they were full, the bags were carried to the river and thrown in, so that the next rains would wash them away.
It was not carelessness. The women knew the nappies were harming their families, their livestock and their water, but with no waste collection service, and for cultural reasons, it was the best option available to them.
Six years later, research led by the University of the Western Cape (UWC) has helped these communities set up collection networks, reusable cloth nappy programmes and small-scale incineration to combat illegal dumping and dangerous open burning. The findings have also informed South Africa’s Disposable Absorbent Hygiene Products (AHP) Strategy, developed by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.
The work is led by Professor Catherina Schenck, who holds the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Waste and Society at UWC. Called “Transforming Waste into Hope”, it was one of 23 case studies selected in 2025 for Universities South Africa’s (USAf’s) Impact Initiative, and was presented at the 4th USAf Higher Education Conference in Tshwane recently.
It began with a study, between 2020 and 2022, into why illegal dumping and littering happen in underserviced communities. In rural areas, the researchers found piles of used nappies and sanitary products dumped in the open, where households have no regular waste collection.
Professor Schenck, her colleague Dr Antoinette van der Merwe and PhD student Charlotte Nell partnered with the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Region (K2C), a non-profit organisation with more than 20 years’ experience in the area and a deep understanding of its communities. From the start, the solutions had to come from the communities themselves.
K2C team members, including Resoketswe “Shoki” Mafogo and Mpho Mativandlela, set out to find what alternatives the communities, and the mothers, actually had. With the help of local field workers who knew the villagers, they completed 1 575 questionnaires with caregivers and ran 18 focus groups.
The team mapped where the nappies were being dumped and found they were clustered along the rivers. Mothers wanted the nappies to be washed away by the next rains and kept far from the home, so that, according to their beliefs, no harm would come to their babies.
The numbers of nappies generated per day were truly staggering: 37 000 a day in Maruleng and 172 000 a day in Bushbuckridge. Some 97% of caregivers used disposable nappies, and 90% received the child support grant.
That created a second problem. Disposable nappies cost R385 a month, against a child support grant of R500.
This meant that a significant share of the grant, which was meant for the well-being of the child, was being spent on single-use nappies that ended up in rivers. Nappies dumped in the open were often eaten by livestock, causing illness and in some cases death, and costing families money. Burning the nappies was difficult because they were wet, so they were buried or dumped.
Each village (Enable, Phiring and Malaeneng) chose its own solution. Two had no reliable clean water, which made washing cloth nappies risky. One is testing a small incinerator fuelled by alien invasive plants. The other set up drums for used nappies, which a local resident collects with a bakkie and takes to a municipal skip. The third chose reusable cloth nappies, and that is where the team is now working.
The model is built around an eco-savings group, essentially a stokvel, which the community already knew well. It brings together parents with babies, women and teenage girls who need sanitary products, and local seamstresses.
Neither the community nor K2C wanted the nappies to be a handout. They wanted a sense of ownership and participation. The savings group pays for a mother’s first set of reusable nappies. She signs an agreement to pay the money back, and that money buys locally produced, reusable nappies for the next mother.
Disposable nappies cost a family about R14 000 over a child’s first three years. A reusable starter pack, which grows with the child and is bought directly from a supplier, costs just over R1 600.
Local seamstresses were trained to make reusable sanitary pads, which they sell in the community and at a local farmers’ market. They produced and sold 344 pads, more than the target.
So far 45 households in the village use cloth nappies. Of the mothers, 96% are satisfied with them, all are still using them, and all would recommend them to other mothers.
More than 184 rural families now belong to the eco-savings groups and fewer nappies are being dumped. Community leaders, and officials up to provincial level, now know about the problem.
The research also contributed to the setting up of a national waste forum on absorbent hygiene products.
The project has produced academic results too: master’s research at UWC by K2C staff member Mpho Mativandlela, and a PhD thesis by Charlotte Nell, just submitted at Stellenbosch University.
Talks are under way with other communities and provincial government about repeating the model elsewhere. The project, the team says, shows that biosphere reserves can be laboratories for addressing global challenges at local scales.
Janine Greenleaf Walker is a contract writer for Universities South Africa.
