Why be a green mum?
Why be aGreen Mum? Everyone has their own answer to this question. A lot of women will say ‘I’m not because I haven’t got the time or the money and anyway, what is a Green Mum?’ I suspect that that could sum up many of us and it’s a fair point. What does being ‘Green’ actually mean? It is a fairly nebulous concept but to me it means doing what I reasonably can to make the environment around me a better place. That’s partly why I started my online shop www.greenmums.co.uk, and why I try to lead my life in a way that leaves as little impact on the planet as I can.
While I was setting the business up I undertook lots of research so that I was positive that the products I was selling were what they claimed to be. This research led me to some alarming facts about the amount and type of chemicals that our babies come into contact with every day. One thing I didn’t realise is that a babies skin is 5 times thinner than that of an adults. When you take into account the fact that our skin absorbs 60% of what we put on it, it makes you think about the products that we use on our little ones on a daily basis.
There is a wide range of organic clothing available for babies at the moment, mums are beginning to choose cotton which has not been exposed to chemicals during the production process. Whilst wearing organic clothing may not directly affect your baby’s health, what it can do is to improve the lives of farmers and their families in developing countries. Conventional cotton farming uses a quarter of the worlds pesticides and, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) 20,000 deaths occur every year due to pesticide poisoning in developing countries.
Organic cotton clothing may cost a few pence more but with organic material you are getting a softer, stronger, better material – this is one of the reasons why we choose organic cotton.
Like many parents, we live on a tight budget and can’t always afford to buy organic food. We do try to grow our own as much as possible, although space is limited at home due to an enormous amount of children’s play things strewn all over the garden!
What we always try to do though, is to recycle anything and everything. Clothing usually comes from the charity shop or second hand sales and we always pass on what we no longer need rather than just sending it to landfill. A lot of people think that to be a Green Mum will cost you more, but it can actually save you money so this is not really the case.
We are lucky that our local council have a very good recycling facility so anything made of plastic, metal, paper or card goes straight into the green bin outside our back door and is left for the dustmen once a week. It did take a little time to get used to doing this, after all you do have to wash all those empty baked bean tins and milk cartons before you recycle them so it’s all extra time in an already busy day. I have to say though, at the end of the week when we see how much we’ve collected it does make me feel quite good.
Our biggest contribution towards being green has been using cloth nappies for our daughter Lily. A friend of ours first suggested using these when I was pregnant and I thought she was mad! ‘Why would I want to wash all those dirty nappies when I could use disposables’ was my first thought.
Fortunately I did do quite a bit of research into this before making a decision and I did decide to use cloth nappies from the moment she was born. I was amazed at how easy it was to use them, they are so simple to put on (none of those fiddly safety pins of years ago) and I wash them twice a week. The dirty nappies go straight into a lidded nappy bucket so you don’t get any nasty smells.
In an effort to be even more environmentally friendly, I wash nappies using environmentally friendly laundry detergent which contains a natural soap from soap pods. I also use eco balls which do not use any detergent at all and are especially good if someone in your family has sensitive skin.
I have become so passionate about using cloth nappies that I now try to spread the word as much as I can. I enjoy showing pregnant friends how easy they are to use and potential parents are always excited by the thought that they can save £500 by not using disposables, let’s face it, having a baby is an expensive affair!
As part of my business I offer free cloth nappy advice to anyone who needs it. When I was first using them on Lily I had quite a few questions in the early days and I was lucky that I had a friend who I could ask. I’m aware that not everyone has this support so a little impartial advice at the end of the phone is always a bonus. I’m also working with the local council to offer free nappy trial kits to new parents. Parents can use the kit for one month to see how it works for them. This has already been trialed in other parts of the county and the feedback has been really positive.
The average child uses 5000 disposable nappies from birth to potty training and these nappies take hundreds of years to rot down in landfill sites. If choosing cloth nappies over disposables is the only choice we make as green parents, it’s still a huge difference that we can make to the environment.