Today marks the first day of Zero Waste Week. A whole week dedicated to promoting ways to reduce our waste. With that in mind, I thought I would share my journey with you.
My Zero Waste Journey
Before I begin I want to say, that I am not perfect. There are still plenty of things I can be/could be doing to reduce our waste footprint. However, for me a lot of its factors on cost and at the moment we just can not afford to do somethings. I know what I need to be doing and changes are being made gradually and for me, that is what is important. The changes are happening!
The beginning
It wasn’t until Oliver was around 4 months old that I started to understand the waste as a family we were creating. So when I was shown cloth nappies I knew that I wanted to make the switch. Back then it wasn’t entirely environmental reasons for the switch, nor was it financial. I just really loved the patterns and prints and knowing it was cloth not plastic near Oliver’s skin.
A few months into our journey I began promoting cloth nappies via a Nappy Library that I started. I really enjoyed learning more about cloth nappies and with that came a greater understanding of the environmental aspects. Knowing that I was preventing literally hundreds of disposable nappies from sitting in landfill sparked joy.
I then learned about cloth wipes and instantly made the switch. For me, cloth nappies and wipes come hand in hand.
a Baby in cloth nappies
When I found out I was pregnant with Arthur I was pretty determined not to use disposable nappies. So I built a collection of newborn/small nappies to use when the time came. I also looked up alternatives to umbilical cord clips and found that I could actually make my own. So I looked into what I needed and within a few days, using thread I already owned, I made Arthur’s umbilical cord tie.
Looking back I was still rather wasteful when it came to buying things. I wasn’t opposed to buying second hand and for some items I did. His swinging crib I bought of Facebook for £5! However, I was still so much into fast fashion and bought pretty much all of his clothes from Next. Gradually I learnt about other clothing brands available, ones that were a little more environmentally conscious. Brands like Frugi, Picallily, where the clothes were bright and young but made using organic cotton. So I stopped buying so much from Next and other high street brands.
It helped a great to deal to know that there was such a community behind cloth nappies and brands that I was buying, that selling them once I had finished using them would help recoup some of the costs.
Reducing other plastics
It wasn’t until having Arthur that I started to look into other things I could swap over;
- Reusable Breast Pads
- Reusable Menstrual Products
- Household wipes
- Toys!
- Reusable shopping bags!!! –
Zero waste week
So this week I will be sharing a series of posts with the aim to help reduce household waste and those pesky single use plastics.
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