What Whoopsie Wipes makes, and who it is for

One thing: a dry wipe of pure cotton, eight inches square, folded into packs of a hundred, sold in boxes of two, six and twelve packs. It comes out of the pack dry and becomes a wet wipe when you add water. There is no second product, no scented version and no lotion version, because the whole idea is that the pack contains cotton and the tap contains water, and you put them together when you need to.

Three things you can check on the pack. The ingredient list is one word long. The pack has no liquid in it, so nothing needs preserving and nothing dries out or leaks in a bag. And the square is cotton rather than a synthetic blend, so it is thick, lint-free and holds together wet, and it goes in an organic-waste bin afterwards rather than staying a plastic wipe forever.

The trade is water and price. You supply the water, from a tap or a spray bottle, and per wipe the square costs more than a tub of pre-moistened ones.

First, a newborn, whose skin the pediatric and dermatology bodies say to clean with water and something soft, free of fragrance and alcohol. Then any child whose skin has reacted to something in a wet pack and nobody can say what. And then, quietly, the rest of the house: a dry cotton square takes makeup off, dries hands, cleans a face after dinner and sits in a glovebox for a year without going off.

The cotton is certified to STANDARD 100 by OEKO-TEX, the textile label for harmful substances, in product class I, the class written for babies and children up to three. The standard is public and the certificate is checked by its number on the OEKO-TEX site, which is where we point rather than paraphrasing it into a promise of our own.

Since 2018, which is 8 years of the same square. The useful part of that is not the anniversary but what has not changed: the sheet is still eight inches, the pack is still a hundred, and a box bought years ago and a box bought this week hold the same wipe.