Whoopsie Wipes cotton: what the square is made of

The square is cotton fibre bonded into a sheet, twenty by twenty centimetres, thicker than a tissue and much thicker than the thin non-woven that most wet wipes are cut from. That thickness is what buyers mean when they say it does not shred: wet cotton holds together, and a square that holds together gets folded and used four times rather than balled up after one pass. Because it is fibre and not a woven cloth, it leaves no lint on skin, which is the one thing a ball of cotton wool cannot promise, and the reason the health services’ cotton-wool-and-water method wants a wipe like this one to do it with.

The cotton is certified to STANDARD 100 by OEKO-TEX, the textile label for harmful substances, in product class I, which is the class written for babies and children up to three and carries the strictest limit values. The certificate is checked by its number on the OEKO-TEX site, and the number is printed on the pack, so you do not have to take our word for it. After use, the square is cotton in a bin. Cotton breaks down; a sealed landfill slows everything down, and that is the reason the federal guidance says an unqualified biodegradable claim needs a year and a landfill does not give one. So the honest sentence is the one on the disposal page: the square is cotton, and where you have an organic-waste bin, that is where it goes.