Always looking to buy your unwanted "Chalet School" books for my collection. Leave a messa...
Always looking to buy your unwanted "Chalet School" books for my collection. Leave a message on my GB if interested, I'm happy to offer cash or a trade for my other surplus books. Let's save some trees and recycle reading matter!!
Member since:04.05.2001
Reviews:44
Members who trust:16
“Opinions divided on this product, see, ‘cos a baby’s gotta poo and a baby’s gotta wee. So it all depends on a single point of view, when you gotta chuck the nappy where ya gonna do the doo?”
Ok that’s the rapping done with. Now let’s see about the wrapping. The nappy wrapping I mean. Those of you who prefer reusablenappies, here’s your chance to have a quiet chortle at yet another one of the disposable nappy brigade. Not content with polluting the environment and wasting enormous amounts of money (not to mention enriching the coffers of the mighty Proctor and Gamble) there are those of use wild enough to waste even more money on one of these funny little contraptions.
Now don’t get me wrong. There are people here on Ciao who SWEAR by these little bins and wouldn’t be without them for a moment. And I have to admit that when I was first pregnant and saw them in Boots, they did kind of seem like a good idea. And in the first few months, when I was struggling, to eat/sleep and hold it all together, it was kind of nice to shove the dirty nappy in there and have done with it. Or so I thought.
For those of you already itching to rush out and buy a Sangenic Nappy Wrapper system, they are available from Tesco, Asda, Mothercare, Boots and boots.com, not to mention a few other places. When I first wrote this review the price was around £29.99, although you could use your Boots Advantage Card points instead which was what I did. Boots also had an offer where they gave away 1,000 Advantage Card points for every £30.00 spent on baby products (offers like this are frequently repeated) and so I bought a refill cassette at the same time to take me over the £30 and in effect paid the equivalent of £19.99.
Subsequent research has revealed that these devices have come down quite a bit in price since I first used them. Possibly because the price was putting many people off. They now retail for around £14.99, but this may have a lot to do with competition. TommeeTippee now manufacture their own version of the nappy wrapper at £14.99, so I guess Sangenic felt they had to compete. This doesn't make this review
any less valid, however, so if you are considering buying one then please read on!
Hey wait! Not everyone’s a parent you know. Might be an idea if you explained to all your good readers exactly what these contraceptions ARE. Ok then. Well, basically it’s a lemon yellow coloured bin with a hinged lid into which you place used nappies and wipes as they come off your kid’s behind. No need to place in a nappy bag first as the bin encases them individually with an antibacterial film, which in THEORY keeps the smells from permeating into the room. Good thing too, really as the bins are intended to store the nappies for approx 1 - 2 weeks, after which you empty the contents into your wheelie bin or dustbin and away it goes. Simple!
The reality is a little different. First of all the price. Even they have now come down to just £14.99, that still equates to an awful lot of nappy sacks. Plus you will keep needing to buy refills (about every 3-4 weeks) at around £3.00-£3.65 each. I bought 10 all in one go and they lasted me a year, but my daughter was in full time childcare during the week and only home full time on holidays and weekends. Most of you will need a darn sight more than what I got by with. Plus you will still need nappy sacks for when you are out and about or staying away from home. This isn’t the sort of compact gadget you can take on holiday with you!
When it comes down to it, although it is quite a clever idea, the even cleverer part is persuading you to part with the best part of £15 for what is basically a bin with a lid. Leaving aside all the clever stuff inside, you can buy lidded nappy buckets in Poundstretcher for a couple of quid. So what EXACTLY are you paying for?
The Sangenic system consists of several sections or components. First of all there is the bottom part of the bin which is just a plastic rectangular waste paper basket type shape with smooth curved sides. The top part of the bin consists of a sort of a long dome like thing with a hinged lid that fits on top of the wastepaper basket and the two sections are then kept together using snap fasteners at the sides. Tip: When fitting the two sections together be advised that the bin is wider on one side than the other, so if the top appears not to fit onto the bottom section, try rotating the top 180 degrees!! Obvious I know, but so is working out how to fit the rain hood on your buggy, it’s all so complicated the first time around.
Inside the hinged lid of the top section fits the nappy wrapper cassette. This consists of a large ring of plastic containing a long funnel shaped roll of antibacterial film, kind of like those stockinette rolls of cloth you buy for the car. You tie a knot in the end of the film to seal it and push it down into the bottom of the bin. The nappies then go inside the roll of film, passing through the centre of the cassette. Each time you put a nappy in the bin, a system of six plastic 'gripper' prongs or bars (which sit underneath the area where the cassette goes) hold the nappy whilst you rotate the cassette, effectively creating a twisted seal between the nappy and the one that comes after it. This continues right up until you need to empty the bin, when you open it up and find what I can only describe as a long length of plastic link sausages, each sausage containing a nappy.
Once the roll of antibacterial film runs out you throw away the empty plastic cassette it came in and replace it with a new cassette. Tip: ALWAYS keep a spare cassette in the house as the antibacterial film can run out suddenly without any warning. This is a bit inconvenient if you happen to be disposing of a dirty nappy at the time as it just falls into the bottom of the bin unwrapped!
As part of the nappy wrapper system you are also supplied with a bright yellow retainer ring which fits inside the funnel section of the nappy wrapper cassette and controls the flow of antibacterial film. DON’T LOSE THIS as the entire system is useless without it. Because you get a nappy wrapper cassette included as part of the system, many people assume that this ring is part of the cassette and throw it out when the cassette runs out of film, only to discover when they fit a new cassette that a yellow ring is NOT included and without one the film won’t pull through properly. So please take note.
The manufacturers point out a few obvious advantages of the Nappy Wrapper system such as it reduces trips to the outside bin, it reduces smells, it’s HYGIENIC, and it’s cost effective. I would personally dispute some of these claims. It’s not cost effective for a start. Ok so you’re paying for the convenience, but as I intend to show, this system isn’t always as convenient as it appears. For one thing, not everywhere stocks the film cassettes, and once you’ve bought one of these bins, you’re in no position to quibble about the price of the refills. No prizes for guessing which part of this system makes the manufacturers the most money.
As to the hygiene element and reducing smells, I would dispute these claims also. The odours which emerged when opening the lid after just a few days don’t bear thinking about. Another reviewer on Ciao felt that the ‘plastic it is made of seems to hold the odour’. She’s probably right. I certainly concur with a few people on here that were of the opinion that after a few weeks of use there was a ‘haze of nastiness’ anytime you went anywhere near the bin. I think my Mother used to refer to it as a ‘Myasma’. Urghh. You could try what one reviewer did and put a spoonful of baking soda inside each time you change the cassette, but let’s face it. Dirty nappies sitting around anywhere for a week are going to smell and that doesn’t seem very hygienic to me, antibacterial film or not.
As a Mother whose sense of smell is now finely honed to the extent that I can detect a dirty nappy 3 streets away, I have to say I struggle to comprehend how anyone can design a plastic that can emit an agent strong enough to mask the smell of a week’s worth of dirty nappies. It might be me but I never smelt any ‘fresh scent’ anywhere near this bin. And when you think about it, bog standard nappy bags come in scented antibacterial varieties too. There’s nothing new here.
Using the Nappy Wrapper system probably does reduce trips to the outside dustbin, it is true. You don’t need to trot outside each time you change a nappy. However, you could buy a cheapo lidded nappy bin from Poundstretcher and still enjoy this convenience. But who really goes outside to the dustbin EVERY time they change a nappy anyway? Let’s face it, if it was midnight and I didn’t have one of these I think I might just wrap the nappy in a double nappy sack and leave it in a bucket or on some newspaper by the back door, wouldn’t you?
Although it's a couple of years since I first wrote this review, thinking back I STILL get annoyed when I think about all the problems I encountered with this bin. First of all the hinged lid was made of cheap plastic and after 12 months of use the hinges worked loose so it was impossible to open or shut it one handed. What tended to happen was that the lid would fly off at some point and had to be rescued later. That DIDN’T help the odour situation, or my temper! What made things worse was that a friend who bought her bin at the same time didn't seem to encounter any problems with the hinges at all.
Another thing that annoyed me was that after you emptied the bin you tended to find that the twisting mechanism that separates the nappies into separate sausages inside the plastic film funnel seemed not to work anymore. The first nappy was ok. You'd push it into the plastic 'gripper' prongs and twist the top as normal. Then when you put the second nappy in, as you twisted it the first nappy dropped out of the prongs and the entire funnel of plastic film untwisted. This just kept happening until a nappy hit the bottom of the bin, and then after that the weight of the nappies at the bottom meant that the twisting mechanism was ok until you had to empty the bin again. However, up until this point none of the nappies were individually sealed and this didn’t help the smell when you opened the lid each time.
Another little problem that the plastic ‘gripper’ prongs that held the nappy didn’t seem to stay in their holes very well and quite often when you 'd empty the bin they would fall out. I lost one quite early on so which probably got thrown out with the rest of the nappies and had to exist on just five little prongs. The bin still worked ok but it was damn annoying. Several other reviewers on Ciao have complained about this so I know it wasn't just me being careless, it’s bad design.
The final thing that annoyed me was the cutter inside the lid. The bin invariably needed emptying before the plastic film cassette ran out. Those clever people at Sangenic had anticipated this and devised a small metal blade inside the lid of the system which when depressed with the lid shut, SUPPOSEDLY cut through the plastic film allowing you to separate and tie off the soiled nappy section ready for disposal and then tie off a new section of plastic film ready for the next lot of nappies. All without having to get your hands dirty. Very clever. Except that the knife invariably didn’t work and only cut about half way through the film, leaving me to finish the job with scissors which then had to be disinfected. Labour saving this WASN'T.
All in all this Sangenic nappy wrapper system is more of a luxury item than a necessity. It isn’t really a ‘must have’ as much the same convenience can be achieved with an ordinary nappy bin and some quality scented antibacterial nappy sacks. Unless you are a seriously rich parent with money to burn and an instinct for novelty, DON'T do what I did and buy one of these.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
OH the nappy dalek! Sadly if you have a baby that produces smelly poo's (and many do!) the nappy wrapping system can't quite cope. The day I took ours down the tip was a happy day indeed!
missixty 12.03.2005 22:07
Sounds like you had a bad experience. When I was pregnant I really wanted one of these but got put off getting one, and then got told by my then parnter we could have his brothers one they'd used for their neice. When this eventually turned up, like you said the plastic had sort of absorbed the odour so we threw it straight out. However, as my baby went on to solid foods I could no longer bear the smell of the nappies simply in a nappy bag (or ten) in the bin. As we live above ground floor their is no taking them to an outside bin - they're there for the week until the bin men come! So I eventually bought one and I have to say I think it's brilliant and have had nothing but good experiences with it. Good review though, you expressed your opinon and experiences well.
Jaynestep 14.02.2005 16:34
Great review, i just use nappy sacks and pop them in the bin, no odours omitting from there yet!! Jayne x x
Be well prepared and save money when you buy this 3-pack refill cassette for the Sangenic ... more
Nappy Wrapper tub, which wraps and seals each individual nappy and stores them in a discreet manner. The multi-layered film combines an anti-bacterial agent and f...
Postage & Packaging: £3.95 Availability: In stock. 3 working days
Getting riding of soiled nappies has never been easier, tidier or more discreet than this. ... more
Just put the dirty nappy in and twist the lid - the Sangenic advanced nappy disposal system wraps and seals each nappy individually, eliminating odours and germs...
Postage & Packaging: £3.95 Availability: In stock. 3 working days
Jan 17th, 2003
(Feb 5th, 2005)
very helpful by (95%):
helpful by (5%):
