A study by Landbank found:

* Disposables use twice as much water as cloth nappies
* Disposables use 3.5 times more total energy and 8 times more non-renewable resources (eg: petrochemicals used to manufacture their components). They also use 90 times more renewable resources such as wood pulp and cotton so therefore to utilise need more land and water for the growing of these resources.
* Disposables produce 240kg of waste per year, compared to the 4kg produced by a child in cloth nappies.

So in fact disposables use far more energy and resources than cloth nappies.