Tips on how to grow a green baby
Modern parents are becoming increasingly concerned about the future of our planet and safeguarding it for future generations. It’s our job to help our children to tread lightly on their planet.
At the beginning of their lives our babies have very few real consumer needs. They need food, clothing, warmth and a lot of love. Here are a few ideas to keep their consumer needs to a minimum throughout their growing years.
Babies
1. Try to avoid using disposable nappies if not all of the time at least some of it. Think of all those landfill sites.
2. Breastfeed if you possibly can, you have it on tap! Although I do understand that this is not possible for everyone.
3. When it’s time for solid foods make your own. Why does it all have to come out of a tin or jar? It needn’t even be that time consuming. You can freeze a little extra vegetable etc. prepared when you cooked your own meal and have several ready for use.
4. Choose organic cotton produced without toxic chemicals, it lasts longer and doesn’t irritate tender baby skins.
Children
As babies get older the best way forward is to set a good example for your kids so that they can understand about the need to conserve energy. It can be really simple.
5. Be a good example, turning lights off when not needed and ensuring taps are not left running, only boiling the amount of water you need, or choosing a shower instead of a bath.
6. From an early age explain to them why we do things in certain ways rather than meaningless nagging which from experience I know they tune out.
7. Get the children to help with recycling. How wonderfully satisfying and noisy it is posting bottles into the bottle bank and an opportunity to learn about colours too when we sort out which containers they go into.
8. Composting can be great fun and later if you are lucky enough to have the space they can see the benefits with their own little patch of garden.
9. Aim to buy food locally where possible and don’t get the car out for every trip unless it really is too far to walk.
10. Do you really need all those expensive chemical laden cleaning products? You could try swapping them for greener alternatives. Bicarbonate of soda for example is great for cleaning the fridge and gets rid of odours in there as well. Distilled white vinegar has a myriad of uses check it out; I find it helpful to add to the rinsing water to get all the soap out of clothes.
11. Try not to waste food and buy only what you need. I can recommend ‘stovies’ as a way of using up vegetables and meat left over from the joint. Mix the chopped meat with some onion, leftover vegetables and mashed potato and even a little gravy if you have some of that left. Mix all together and pan fry like bubble and squeak. Delicious and kids like it too especially with the addition of some ketchup.
Implementing these simple ideas will hopefully lead to your kids in time telling you how best to conserve energy.
At the beginning of their lives our babies have very few real consumer needs. They need food, clothing, warmth and a lot of love. Here are a few ideas to keep their consumer needs to a minimum throughout their growing years.
Babies
1. Try to avoid using disposable nappies if not all of the time at least some of it. Think of all those landfill sites.
2. Breastfeed if you possibly can, you have it on tap! Although I do understand that this is not possible for everyone.
3. When it’s time for solid foods make your own. Why does it all have to come out of a tin or jar? It needn’t even be that time consuming. You can freeze a little extra vegetable etc. prepared when you cooked your own meal and have several ready for use.
4. Choose organic cotton produced without toxic chemicals, it lasts longer and doesn’t irritate tender baby skins.
Children
As babies get older the best way forward is to set a good example for your kids so that they can understand about the need to conserve energy. It can be really simple.
5. Be a good example, turning lights off when not needed and ensuring taps are not left running, only boiling the amount of water you need, or choosing a shower instead of a bath.
6. From an early age explain to them why we do things in certain ways rather than meaningless nagging which from experience I know they tune out.
7. Get the children to help with recycling. How wonderfully satisfying and noisy it is posting bottles into the bottle bank and an opportunity to learn about colours too when we sort out which containers they go into.
8. Composting can be great fun and later if you are lucky enough to have the space they can see the benefits with their own little patch of garden.
9. Aim to buy food locally where possible and don’t get the car out for every trip unless it really is too far to walk.
10. Do you really need all those expensive chemical laden cleaning products? You could try swapping them for greener alternatives. Bicarbonate of soda for example is great for cleaning the fridge and gets rid of odours in there as well. Distilled white vinegar has a myriad of uses check it out; I find it helpful to add to the rinsing water to get all the soap out of clothes.
11. Try not to waste food and buy only what you need. I can recommend ‘stovies’ as a way of using up vegetables and meat left over from the joint. Mix the chopped meat with some onion, leftover vegetables and mashed potato and even a little gravy if you have some of that left. Mix all together and pan fry like bubble and squeak. Delicious and kids like it too especially with the addition of some ketchup.
Implementing these simple ideas will hopefully lead to your kids in time telling you how best to conserve energy.
Add a Comment
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Comment by Linda Sones on March 5, 2009 at 1:35pm
- Well they do say that from little acorns grow.... Its not always the grand see me statement is it?
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Comment by Sarah on March 5, 2009 at 12:35pm
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Me three!
Sarah is right either you're a breast beating all organic greener than a green thing super woman
orrr you are a wastrel!
We "do our bit" IE what we can and I will go out of my way to recycle and lobby the council from time to time
we always walk everywhere and buy the vast majority in our village and things like that.
I hate waste!!
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Really enjoyed that read too, it's weird there seems to be no middle ground either you are 100% organic recycling non bio composting anti supermarket animal righting vegetarian mum or you are a chuck away
it's nice to have some pointers to the small things you can do to build up to a better world.
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Comment by Nikki - Web Mums on March 25, 2008 at 2:01pm -
No Rush!! :-)
I'll get that blog post into the articles menu on resources later today!
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Hi Nikki,
Glad you enjoyed the post I would be very happy for it to be archived. I actually signed up to Quassia yesterday But I haven't posted anything yet.
. By the way I have your interview and will try and complete it today or tomorrow.
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Comment by Nikki - Web Mums on March 25, 2008 at 1:19pm
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Linda - I really, really enjoyed this post! Some great advice there! I'd like to put it into the archives as an article if that is ok with you? I will obviously give the full credit and a link back to your website!
Also Linda, have you checked out qassia yet? It's a website where you can submit articles and it gives you backlinks and promotes your website - now is a really good time to get in as you get - what they call - Qassia dollars for everyone that you refer and all the articles you rate and submit. This will then stand you in good stead with their directory which is going live soon. Apparently - the amount of dollars they are giving out is going down in the next few weeks - so it's a great time to get in.
This kind of article would go down a treat!
Check it out:-
http://webmums.qassia.com/
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