Albury Council’s halve-waste program yesterday started a week-long compostable nappy trial involving five childcare centres.

The trial is being run in conjunction with Western Composting at Shepparton.

It aims to assess the practicality of using nappies that can be composted compared with the more widely used disposable ones, which end up in landfill.

The council’s waste management team leader Andrea Baldwin said childcare centres involved would swap their usual disposable nappies for the compostable kind.

“We are looking at this as an option in the future to add to the organic services,” she said.

Woodlands Childcare Centre, Goodstart Early Learning, Yarrunga Early Learning Centre, Wilcox Street Early Learning Centre and Banjora Childcare Centre have all volunteered for the trial.

The nappies will be collected at the end of the week and taken to Western Composting.

There they will be processed within a trial batch of compost in order to report on whether they see any quality impacts.

More than 800 million disposable nappies are disposed of at landfill each year in Australia, making up just over 1 per cent of materials going to landfill.

While there are many biodegradable and compostable alternatives on the market, they are not widely used because few councils accept them through their green waste bins.