5 Tips Of Sustainable Parenting To Prove How ‘Save The Earth’ Becomes The Motto

As new parents, sometimes, in the quest for providing the best for our kids, we go overboard with our purchases and parenting choices, oblivious to the environmental impact. Of late there has been a lot of awareness about how ‘Save the Earth’ can be a motto in your parenting style. We can opt for initiatives such as reusing, refurbishing, and recycling as our gift to the environment.

How Save the Earth can be your motto of parenting? – 5 Sustainable Parenting Tips

Sustainable parenting choices can ensure a healthy environment for our future generations thereby reducing the harmful impact on the environment. Some of the sustainable parenting practices can help in reducing waste production considerably.

Here are a few tips on how sustainable or green parenting could teach you how Save The Earth becomes your responsibility that you fulfil without fail.

1. Cloth diapers

The age-old practice of homemade cloth diapers has been replaced with disposable diapers which are easy to use, have less leakage, and eliminate the cumbersome washing in cloth diapers. The largest source of waste is disposable diapers. A newborn baby, till the age of potty training roughly uses 4-5 diapers on an average which would be around 5,500 -7000 diapers lying in a landfill undecomposed. Shifting to the new age reusable cloth diapers is an eco-friendly, comfortable alternative that is cost-effective. Moreover, the waste products from diaper disposal are negligible. There are many good brands like Superbottoms, Babyhug offering cloth diapers in adorable and cute funky prints. It can be reused and are pocket-friendly in long run. As they are stretchable, 7-8 cloth diapers can easily help you sail through a year and more if you wash them daily.

2. Sustainable practices

Plastic cutlery, as well as nursery gear, are cute and easy to get but their lifespan is less. Bamboo fibre and wooden plates, glasses, and nursery gears in cute designs are available readily online nowadays. These are sturdy, durable, and less prone to breakage, and you can also hand them over to the younger sibling after use. Isn’t this how Save the Earth can be a motto that we incorporate?

While organizing functions like birthday parties use biodegradable non-toxic backdrops, plant-based cutlery, packaging materials. Thus your little one’s birthday party celebrations don’t add to the non-degradable items of landfills.

3. Sustainable  toys and preloved books

Parents tend to hoard plastic toys for their little ones. They get broken easily and are discarded easily contributing to plastic waste production. We should make a conscious effort to buy sustainable and durable toys made from wood or other eco-friendly alternatives like bamboo. We can also reuse them or even hand them over to younger kids. Encourage getting preloved toys or handed down toys from friends and family. This way you increase the effective use of toys and books before discarding them.

Look online for preloved book and toy stores or check the local toy, book swap stores for your little ones. Old, damaged plastic toys should be collected and given to plastic recycling agencies rather than thrown in the dustbin for effective disposal of plastic toys.

4. Less is more

Kids don’t need rooms filled with toys, gadgets, and nursery gear. Think twice before making a purchase, do minimal and essential purchases only. Kids outgrow their clothes, toys, and nursery gears very fast. The discarded toys lead to money drain as well as waste generation.

Around six-eight new pairs of good quality oversized clothes, every year are enough for kids. You can train your kids to wear the worn-out, shorter clothes as home wear with a little tailoring.

5. Home-made foods for kids

Breast milk is the most environment-friendly, sustainable food option for babies with no harmful impact on the environment. If you are using formula milk for babies, try to use glass or steel feeder bottles over plastic bottles. Try giving natural homemade food like ragi, banana powder, vegetables, etc than packaged baby foods that use plastic packaging.

I learned sustainable and mindful parenting as I progressed in motherhood. I realized how even small sustainable parenting choices like diapering can have a huge impact on the environment. Thus, I made a shift in my parenting choices and the purchases I made for my child. We, as parents, don’t want to compromise and are ready to shell out money for expensive toys and nursery gear and we don’t think about how eco-friendly and bio-degradable the material is while making purchases. But mindful sustainable parenting choices like these can tell us how Save the Earth is our responsibility and that we can have a positive impact on the environment and a better world for our children to grow up in.

by Anjana Reghu

Winner of Top Mom Bloggers contests conducted by The Champa Tree. She is an influencer with the Instagram page the_sassy_mommy. Her article ‘5 Tips Of Sustainable Parenting To Prove How ‘Save the Earth’ Becomes The Motto’, which gives tips about sustainable parenting, paved the way for her selection.