Ultimate Guide: Waste Reduction with a Baby!

When a new baby arrives in the house, so many things change. Your routine turns into what routine?  Your total outlook on life changes because you have a little person to love and protect. And your waste increases by about 50% because of all of the disposable products we tend to use for babies.

Over the following years, the baby grows and so do the things we waste. Disposable nappies, single use products, food scraps from half eaten foods, plastic and packaging from toys… the list goes on.

One of the things we seem to have lost touch with is, where does all of this unnecessary waste end up? Well, I can tell you. It ends up in a landfill, which is like a time capsule of our obsessive plastic-packaged disposable generation.

I could go on and on about all of the potential ways you can reduce waste with a baby in the house. It takes time.  It has taken me 9 years to get to where I am now and we have done one thing at a time.  We started with nappies and went from there. Over time we added in one little step at a time and have become a sustainable household. We are not perfect, we are just doing our best. Some days it feels like using disposable things are easier than using reusable things. I believe that it is our mindset that needs to change.  

From my personal experience, I believe that we were convinced by very astute marketing that we would have more time available in our lives if we used disposable products because you could just throw it away when you are done with it instead of taking the time to wash it. 

Over time in our home we have found that most reusable things will work just as well if not better than their disposable counterparts, it is just that fact that you can dispose of it instead of cleaning something that makes it seem easier at the time. 

But when you look at how much more it costs to buy the disposable options, I believe we ended up working for longer to be able to afford the disposable lifestyle. At the end of the day we realised that we were actually just throwing our money into the landfill.  

Now we are more aware of what we buy, what we throw away and our overall waste situation.  If I can do it, anyone can do it! 

Here are a few options to get you started:

1. Baby showers can make waste!

People love to give the new parents baby gifts. While their generosity is a wonderful thing, it can result in an overwhelming number of clothes, toys, and weird gadgets and gizmos that you really don't need. Sometimes what can be far more helpful for new parents are more practical gifts.

Perhaps you have a mate whois a great cook and could give you a few meals for in the freezer, gift certificates might be helpful that you could put towards your new buggy or carseat. Everyone generally just wants to help and make life easier for the new family so have a think about what you need and put that out there. 

2. Only buy what you need! 

Don’t get sucked into the lists of stuff you need to buy to have a baby, these are written by the stores and are there to sell you a bunch of things you will never use.

You don’t need to buy things just in case you need it, you can just buy what you need and if you need something else you can go and buy it afterwards. Online shopping makes it so much easier to shop from home.

Don’t worry you are not missing out! Most of the amazing plastic clad products that promise to improve and ease your parenting journey are not necessary. In fact I would almost guarantee you probably won’t ever miss them if you don’t buy them.

3. Buy Second Hand

There are so many products we don’t need to purchase new. Things like Cots are used for such a short amount of time, do you really need the expense of a whole new one or could you buy a second hand one and just buy a new mattress for it?

Clothing is another big environmental contributor of emissions, babies grow out of everything so fast that second-hand baby clothing is often like new. What you might pay $30 for new you can often get for $2 at an op shop.</