紙

日本の紙

Objective:

We investigated at which age children who started caregiver-assisted toilet training (diaperless child care) under age 1 stopped needing diapers.

Methods:

We conducted a cross-sectional study using a self-administered mailed questionnaire in Tokyo be tween April and May 2012. The participants were mothers who started toilet training their children under age 1. At the time of the study, the children had to be ≥2 years old. Questionnaires were dis tributed to 175 mothers, and data from 125 were analyzed.

Results:

A total of 116 (92.8%) children stopped needing diapers during the day, and the mean age of the chil dren who did not rely on diapers was 21 months. Mean age did not significantly differ by characteris tics such as childʼs or the motherʼs age, family structure, or employment situation. However, it tend ed to be related to the frequency of using paper diapers and age of starting diaperless childcare.

Discussion:

An increase in the number of children using diapers at 3 years of age has been reported in recent years. However, the mean age at which children in this study did not rely on diapers during the day was <2 years. Our findings suggest that early caregiver-assisted toilet training can facilitate indepen dent toileting in children.

The annual production of disposable diapers in Japan amounts to about 23.5 billion sheets, which is the total for 2018 including infants and adults. In the background of future increase of the elderly population, further increases in the production are expected. Most of used disposable diapers are incinerated and recycled in some areas, but closed recycling has not yet been implemented. Therefore, a new technology has been developed to circulate used disposable diapers using recycled pulps and Superabsorbent Polymer (SAP) as raw materials. Recycled pulps have been confirmed to meet the same quality as virgin pulps. The environmental impact was assessed using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, which found an 88% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

国内生産量が年間50 億枚（2015 年）を超える大人用紙

　臨床で看護師が実践している