I’ve discovered that babies are cute but expensive and really bad for the environment. As Tiny has gotten older we’ve tried to be more environmentally friendly as a family. Here’s a few tips to reduce your small human’s carbon footprint.
1. Cloth nappies. I recommend Tots Bots. According to The Centre for Sustainable Energy newborn babies go through 6 to 12 nappies a day which is about 3 billion nappies a year in England and Wales. Babies use an average of 5000 nappies before they’re potty trained and that’s all going to landfill. Cloth nappies create less waste and can be better for the environment if they’re washed at 30 and not tumble dried! Ovo Energy have some great info on their website about the energy usage of reusable nappies.
2. Cloth wipes. I love Cheeky Wipes. They’re probably the best baby product we’ve bought. I’ve found these better for cleaning poop and they’re better for the environment and bums than wipes.
3. CSPs and Cloth breast pads. I’m obsessed with CSPs and wish I’d known about them right after Tiny was born. There are some lovely postpartum CSPs available through Etsy to make that stage more bearable. I went through a ton of disposable breast pads before I discovered these. It was a lot of waste and I only breastfed for 3 months. They also stuck to my skin and irritated it. If you plan on breastfeeding for longer cloth pads are a great idea. There’s some really cute designs available. I use mine as mini face cloths now!
5. Charity shopping. I love buying my own clothes in charity shops and I really enjoyed hunting for lovely baby clothes for Tiny. There’s loads of hardly worn clothes out there especially in the smaller sizes as they grow so quickly. In fact I think all the onesies we took to the hospital were charity shop finds. Of course there are nearly new sales… but I couldn’t stand the frenzy.
6. Accept hand-me-downs. There’s nothing I love more then receiving a big bag of hand-me-downs. I don’t necessarily keep it all. As a rule I don’t keep anything stained or anything with annoying slogans on. Between charity shopping and hand-me-downs we’ve bought few new clothes for Tiny. I went a bit mad in a Mothercare sale once, and of course there’s always some mad animal clothes that I can’t resist. As Tiny was the first grandchild on one side she has also been spoilt rotten with clothes from my mum!
diaryofazombiemum 