Thrifty, Creative
and Eco-Friendly Ways
to Raise Your Child
Nicola Baird
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Published in 2010 by Vermilion, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
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Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Bringing up Baby Green
1: Give Your Home a Green Makeover
2: Shopping
3: Gifts and Celebrations
4: Food – What’s Your Child Eating?
5: Nappies
6: Time with Your Baby
7: Sleeping, Baths and No-Fee Babysitting
8: Getting Around
9: Valuing Local Life
Conclusion: Next Steps
Resources
Bibliography
Index
Special thanks to Pete and our daughters,
Lola and Nell, and also to my own mum.
About the Author
Nicola Baird is a city-based environmental journalist and mum of two young children. She’s also the author of six books, including the co-authored Save Cash and Save the Planet (Collins, 2005). She blogs often about fun ways to travel with kids (all without leaving the UK), see www.aroundbritainnoplane.blogspot.com, and also more about baby and childcare at www.homemadekids.co.uk. For surprising insights into eco lifestyles, read the romantic comedy, There’s a Hippo in My Cistern, written by her football-obsessed husband Pete May (Collins, 2007).
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to everyone who helped suggest ideas and interviewees, including the book’s first champions, Clare Hulton, Miranda West and Cindy Chan. Plus a special thank you for test reading to new mums Anne Coddington, Stacy Kurokwa-Cook and Andrea Lewis. Also thank you to Justine Taylor, Laura McKay, Jane Hutchings, Yin Yan Wu and Cecily Chu and my agent David Luxton.
Bringing up Baby Green
Having a baby can be the perfect opportunity to make practical changes that are good for you and that avoid damaging the planet. If we can resist buying everything new, learn to adapt what we’ve got and enjoy and appreciate the world around us, then there’s a good chance that our babies will grow up with real respect for the planet and an understanding that cooperation is a vital – and life enhancing – life skill. It should not feel worthy: green baby care is hands-on and fun. For some parents the clincher in these financially challenging times might be that many of the suggestions in this book suit those of us watching our spending. Whatever your motivations, here’s to enjoying time spent with our homemade kids.
‘My advice to pregnant women wanting to be green is don’t buy anything (apart from possibly cloth nappies). You get given loads of stuff, and when you’re pregnant it’s incredibly tempting to get sucked into the consumer guilt-fuelled hell that is motherhood. New babies need hardly anything, and there’s plenty of time to find out what you do really need after they are born. I hardly ever used baby baths, changing mats, baby monitors.’
Caroline, 33, with Madeleine, six, and Rudy, four
All babies need is love, food and a safe place to live. That’s all they’ve ever needed. But if you are pregnant the chances are that you’ve already drawn up a list of the things that you think a baby must have even before the little ‘un appears. Bet it’s already longer than a newborn tip to toe. There’s still a chance to buck this trend, suppose this year’s new arrivals – more than 7,000 babies are born in the UK each day – were raised in a home where thrifty green thinking underpinned most decisions, raising our children would be far less damaging for the environment.
Having fewer children is probably the greenest thing any of us can do. But sex and procreation is not just human instinct – it can be a tremendous pleasure too. Watching your children and their friends grow up is a hard-to-beat joy.
I’ve spoken to all sorts of families who have thought carefully about what they really need to raise a baby in a world that has to adapt to the challenges of peak oil and climate change. Parents have told me they want their children to grow up to be more cooperative, really good at solving problems, a dab hand at skills like cooking and mending, and knowing where to find what’s needed without breaking the bank. If you want your kids to have these skills it helps if you are able to do them too.
‘Since having a baby I’ve become more environmentally conscious, just because there is so much potential for waste and I feel guilty about producing lots of extra rubbish.’
Jude, 34, with Oliver, one
Here’s a less altruistic motivation for questioning how you raise your child. If you follow the standard ‘What I need for my baby’ list for the next 21 years, then your child could cost you over £200,000 (that’s £9,500 per year, or £800 per month) even without being privately educated. Done mindfully, choosing the greenest option, or the next best, can make your life cheaper as well as less complicated. Creative reuse of items you already have is thrifty, fun and satisfying. Breastfeeding avoids the need for bottles, formula and a sterilising kit. Co-sleeping means you don’t have to move house just to make room for your baby…
Raising your child using green principles is good for the planet, but best of all it makes your baby a big part of your life so that your family can enjoy really happy days of simple pleasures – like a Thermos of tea after leaf kicking together at the park, deftly folding reeds into boats or simply using a twig to race across a puddle or stream.
Green childcare is generous and neighbourly. You borrow and you pass things on. Somehow, passing on items seems to give all the users an instant connection, the modern version of an extended family. Sharing items shows you care not just for your planet, it’s also clear evidence that you believe every child matters.
Green days |
CASE STUDY |
For me living life in an eco-friendly way is not a new family trick. I’ve been getting better at it ever since my girls, Lola, ten, and Nell, eight, were born – partly because having children makes you think much more creatively about the future. My husband is adamant that we shouldn’t be ‘earnest greens’, so our meals aren’t always organic, we even occasionally eat takeaway pizza and chips. But we do have some green-tinged principles that we try to apply when we spend. For example, we try to buy only things that we think will last well and we want those things to be ethically sourced, or come from the UK. When we buy something we also want to know the story behind it: where it came from, how it was made, whether it was pre-loved.
Lola was born in a big city in a hospital with no pain relief. Next time I tried a homebirth, again with no pain relief. (I’m lucky, and yes it hurt, but I figured drugs slow down birth so much that I’d rather get the baby out and try breastfeeding ASAP). Our family still lives in the same big city. We have no car, although we are members of a car club. Three of us are vegetarian (Nell eats meat as an occasional treat). We have an amateur vegetable plot in our front city garden, and hens in the back. Using grants, we have installed solar thermal panels to heat our water, and using solar PV panels, we are starting to sell some of our home-generated electricity back to the grid through the renewable energy supplier, Good Energy. It’s nice to know our home is doing some work whenever the sun shines, or, in the case of solar PV, whenever it’s daylight. Pete and I work from home. We don’t earn much but we do what we love. We couldn’t afford to work like this at first so we used a combination of swapping childcare with other parents, nannies, childminders, community and private nurseries, enabling Pete to freelance and me to work part-time for ten years at the biggest environmental organisation in the world, Friends of the Earth.
This book gives you the advantages all second-time parents have. These are the mums and dads who know what works and can bathe a baby, change a nappy and cut up veg for teething batons. They know which experts they trust and what really wasted their time (baby food jars and stair gates for me; worrying about sleep training for others). They are the ones who have draught-proofed their home – making it more comfy when the baby is playing on the sitting-room floor as well as less expensive to heat. These families look out for second-hand clothing and are willing to pass on equipment and outgrown clothing to a younger child, whether friend or stranger. They buy from eBay or use Freecycle, or go to a trusted supplier for quality, fair-traded, or certified products (organic, FSC-certified timber, eco-efficient, etc.).
The best bit is that these families are certain that green childcare helps them to raise happy children. Green parents are skilled at getting their children to join in. They manage this by encouraging even the littlest children to do things like feeding themselves or tidying their toys.
Involve your kids as much as you can, from as young an age as you dare, so their participation becomes an integral part of family life. You may need to learn with them – and that will be less of a chore if you try to enjoy the journey. The only drawback to bringing up babies green is that when your children are adults they’ll curse you for the lack of misery tales to tell their analyst.
Life-Enhancing Skills
‘Now that Finn is older we’re realising there’s a lot more to green parenting than being a green consumer. We’ve started to introduce him to the idea of recycling and composting and even at the tender age of two and a half he is doing his bit. We’ve also planted out seeds with him and put him “in charge” of watering, which he takes very seriously. We’re not trying to educate him on any big ideas as such, but simply to start to see the connections between what we do.’
Elaine, 44, with Finn, two, and Niall, two weeks
Parents have always tried to raise their children with an eye to the future – they’ve passed on silver teaspoons and family heirlooms. They’ve planted woodlands and left legacies. And they’ve thrown all they can at education, seeing it as the way to give their child an advantage over their peers. But climate change will have a big impact on the way we need to raise children. We need to find ways to bring them up so they are able to cope with adaptation and learn to be more cooperative.
Our children will also need to be resourceful enough to be more self-sufficient. As parents we set up our children’s generation, not just by trying to tackle climate change in the ways that we feel able to do right now, but also by giving our progeny the love and practical skills to handle life in what looks set to be a world where make do, mend and the ability to get on with others will be necessary and life-enhancing.
Childcare matters
‘Having a baby makes you rethink your priorities. I’ve always been really interested in holistic approaches but since the birth of my son, health, happiness and well-being have become top of my list. So much so that I’m retraining to become a homeopath. I’m hoping to practise professionally one day but being able to use what I learn at home on my own family is also really exciting.’
Jo, 34, with Billy, 17 months
Breastfeeding your child may be popular with 30-something mums but statistics show that few women exclusively breastfeed until their child is six months, or even continue much after that. If you’ve had to give up – because you were going back to work, or preferred using formula – aim to be kind to the ones who haven’t, rather than treating it as a mum-versus-mum war. And in turn women who are able to raise their children in a very green manner should be kind to you. The media would have you believe that mothers fall into one of three tribes – the workers, the part-timers and the full-timers – all constantly waging battle against one another. This portrayal of mothers is a huge handicap to each of our individual attempts to bring up our babies well. There would be less conflict if we all accepted that everyone is trying to raise their children in the best way that we can.
Although plenty of dads look after their kids throughout the day, most baby and toddler groups are dominated by adult women. Lots of dads at these sessions moan that they only ever get introduced to the other dads, when getting to know a few more mums would have made the experience a bit more interesting. In a greener world we’d perhaps have a better gender balance. Until then, it makes sense to be open-minded about who is holding the baby.
Simple steps to an eco-aware home
Being a greener parent is a way of future proofing climate-change babes one washable nappy at a time. Be proud of yourself for making a start, however small. Here are some ideas to make it simpler:
1. Make less waste
Make less waste is the same principle readers of women’s fashion magazines know as ‘cost per wear’ for what would otherwise be a pricey outfit. The equivalent green mantra is reduce, reuse, refuse, repair, recycle. For example, a disposable nappy can only be used once, sometimes for less than an hour, before it has to be thrown away. It may then clog up a landfill site for 400 years or more before it rots down into component parts. In contrast, washable nappies can be used many times, over many years. When they are outgrown they can be saved for a future child or passed on to a friend. When they are too tatty to wear the material can be recycled. Using a nappy service is even better because you borrow the nappies, outsource the washing duties and support a useful local business.
Tip
Can you adapt something you already have (or maybe even borrow it)?
Have confidence in your ability to make do, create and mend things – or find someone who can. For instance, you can nibble off your baby’s sharp nails with your teeth – far easier than scissors. You can use teaspoons rather than plastic, heat-sensitive spoons when you start giving your baby food from six months. Try making a mobile (from hangers and painted matchboxes, driftwood and shells) to put over your baby’s sleeping area. Cereal boxes and toilet roll middles can be transformed into a castle with your toddler. Or turn an outgrown or broken buggy into a go-kart, or revamp an unused sandpit into a sunken garden wetland so it becomes a perfect eco-habitat and, with supervision, a safe place for a toddler to explore for mini beasts. An old door secured on to a low trestle (or even logs) will make a good table for outside eating or messy play. Nothing beats a good book for calm, cuddly entertainment that the littlest child will enjoy again and again. You can make reading even more thrilling for a little child if you use their name instead of the main character’s.
2. Learn with your baby
There are some traditionally mumsy skills like knitting and fairy cake decoration which you may already know or learn as your baby grows. But there are so many other things to share with children which we can learn from neighbours, enthusiasts and from experts which, once mastered, will improve your quality of life and may enrich your neighbourhood too.
Newborns are a magnet for know-it-alls who will be adamant about what you should be doing to raise your child properly. You don’t have to follow their unsolicited tips, but don’t rule out the likelihood that good advice can help you find creative solutions to some unexpected baby conundrums. For example, an older neighbour passed on the useful tip that ‘in her day’ socks could double up as gloves for a baby’s tiny hands so you don’t need to make time to go to the charity shop to replace lost gloves.
If you are on maternity leave your baby’s first few months may be the first time you’ve had the chance to get to know your neighbourhood properly. You can have happy days walking in parks, or going to the library after a scan of the community noticeboard to find out what’s going on at the weekend. Walking the local pavements is a brilliant way of getting to know the people who live or work nearby.
‘Being a parent has made me 100 times more connected with the local community. I know so many local people through play groups, school, being a school governor, attending childminder training and just because I have the time to talk to neighbours. And I mean people from different social backgrounds, with different religions, different cultural backgrounds, and who are much older than me – the workplace offers very little scope for meeting other people. I love this ongoing learning process.’
Jo, 39, with Ben, five, and Sally, two
It’s worth remembering that just because an organisation doesn’t focus on children doesn’t mean that it isn’t working hard to change laws to make life better for us all. If you are finding baby care (or the mix of baby care and a job) hard work, then try to support organisations that are helping make your community better. See suggestions in the Resources section.
3. Share the work
‘I love getting out of the house so often meet up with friends for a walk at the local arboretum or in the park. There are loads of drop-in baby and kiddy groups where I live – they have tea and toys – so it’s very easy. If I am meeting friends at my home we have fair-trade tea and the kids just play. We’ve stacks of toys from car boot sales over the years and the garden is one big play adventure with a climbing frame from Freecycle and a wooden play house from eBay.’
Zoe, 39, with Mati, six, and Pip, three
When people offer help, let them – especially when you have a newborn. Ask them to tidy up for ten minutes, pack up the recycling, bring over a pot of soup, or take your baby out of earshot so you can nap, have a shower or catch up on your paperwork. Don’t be shy asking – friends will know how to say no. As your baby grows you can return the favour by offering play dates or setting up babysitting swaps.
If you or your partner can’t handle a seemingly green idea, find another solution. If you are going to enjoy your eco journey it helps if you are both going along for the ride. Talk, dream and do the big changes together, and then just get on with the smaller ones. You’ll be amazed at how much there is to talk about – who knows, you could add a new spark to your relationship as a result.
Going green isn’t the dowdy choice; it’s a fun, sassy way to help your baby and the planet have the best possible future.
Baby steps
Small
Make shopping lists so you only buy things you really need.
Suggest family/friends choose a barely used item as a baby-welcoming gift from second-hand sites like Freecycle or eBay (see list in Resources).
Clear a drawer, or find a large basket, tea chest or cardboard box that you can use to store your new baby’s toys and books in your sitting room/kitchen (rather than an out of the way bedroom). That way you can maintain an adult, clutter-free room during the first few weeks when you may have more visitors than usual – and you’ll have plenty of items on hand to entertain your baby as they start to enjoy playthings more.
Medium
Ask your friends what equipment they hardly ever used when they had a baby – and then borrow useful equipment and maternity clothes.
Decide what space you have to park a buggy. If it’s really small choose a collapsible buggy.
Large
Start thinking about how you want to raise your baby. How much overlap is there with your partner’s aspirations?
Give yourself enough time to find second-hand/pre-loved items. One posting on Freecycle is unlikely to turn up the exact thing that you need, or you may have to factor in extra time to collect an eBay purchase.
Give Your Home a Green Makeover
Most families with antenatal appointments and a snapshot of their bump cannot resist doing up a room. But do you really need all the paraphernalia that advertisers bombard you with? Is decorating a room for your baby – or it is more for you? It may seem lazy, but doing nothing except insulating your home is the best present you could give any child.
‘There are thousands of plastic products on the market designed to make life easier for parents and babies. The majority of these don’t make life easier, clutter our lives, cost money and end up in landfill, nappies included. We don’t need everything that the advertising industry tells us. What we need is to keep it simple.’
Rachel, 39, with Jude, ten, and Eve, 14 months
The nesting instinct – making your home clean, safe and comfortable for your baby – is very common among new parents-to-be. Unfortunately, from the time you announce that you’re expecting a new member of your family, the advertising industry –and sometimes your family and friends – bombard you with stuff they say that you must have. Sometimes it seems nesting is less about making your home fit for a baby, and more about cluttering up your life.
Instead, why not channel your energies into making your home as warm, comfortable and as draught-free as possible? As if climate change wasn’t bad enough, every molecule of carbon dioxide that we burn for heating our homes or driving our cars lives on in the atmosphere for around 100 years.
Making Your Home Energy-Efficient
In 2009 government advisers reckoned it could cost you £15,000 to make your house really energy-efficient. It does sound very expensive, but your home will be so much more comfortable if it is draught-free; you will be making savings as your power bills will be correspondingly lower; the resale value of your home will increase as buyers are becoming more and more savvy about energy efficiency and you will be helping to reduce carbon emissions.
‘The traditional view that people who are at home all the time will have higher fuel bills is missing the point. It’s because people with young children are at home more and need higher temperatures that they need more energy-efficient homes, so that they can actually afford to keep warm.’
Andrew Myer, from Chris Barnett Associates,
Energy & Environmental Consultants (and dad of Ella, nine)
Your boiler
A well-maintained, modern gas boiler, with individual controls – thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) on each radiator and a centrally sited thermostat – can be an efficient way to keep your home warm in the cold if you take the time to get to know the controls. Match the heating hours with when you are in the house. If your child is already at nursery and you are out during the day you could set the heating so it turns off half an hour before you leave the house. You can also set it for half an hour before you normally arrive home if you like to fling your coat off when you get in – at our house we put on fleeces when we come inside. If it gets very cold try a hot-water bottle on your lap. Rugs, quilts or even duvets for snuggling under when you watch a DVD are a good way of staying warm too.
Tip
Remember to change your boiler’s thermostat when the clocks change in late October and March, or if you are away for a night or longer.
Insulation and draught-proofing
‘We draught-proofed external doors – it was easy to get insulating strips from a hardware store. The kitchen is very cold, so between the kitchen and dining room we insulated the internal door and put a brush strip on the bottom to stop draughts. We’ve got a long snakey thing in front of the main door, and insulated the letter box. The living-room floor is quite draughty so we bought a thick rug to make the floor seem much cosier when the kids were crawling on it. The front room has original stained glass – which means no double glazing – so instead we got floor-to-ceiling lined curtains. We really thought about cutting down draughts because we keep the thermostat at 17°C in the winter, and the heating isn’t on all day, so if you are staying in the house you wrap the kids up and put on thermal underwear. Elsie wears tights under her trousers, and a nice woolly jumper knitted by her grandmother.’
Anna, 36, with Freddie, four, and Elsie, two
A good tip if you are watching your budget is to concentrate on making the room you use most – perhaps your kitchen or living room – better insulated. Better draught-proofing may be all you need.
Turn your efforts to hunt out draughts into a game with the kids. Explain it costs money to heat space. ‘Money that could be spent on fruit’ is one way to motivate your assistants, whose mission is to find all the ways heat escapes from each room. Firstly organise a kit for your energy auditors with a tape measure, notebook, pen and super-sized matches. When it’s breezy outside, look for draughts, flimsy window coverings, gappy floorboards and absent insulation. A good trick is to light a match to see if the flame and smoke go straight up, which means that part of your home is well draught-proofed. Pay attention when the smoke angles off at 90 degrees as that is a sign of a major draught (front and back doors are often the biggest culprits for this). Get the children to use their fingers to locate the cold stream of air, then measure the gaps so that you can make a draught excluder.
Tip
Make a doorway draught excluder from scraps
You can buy fancy designs – snakes, sausage dogs, longitudinal cityscapes – to place at the floor edge of all doors that let a draught in under them. Or you could create one yourself. If you don’t want to sew, stuff a pair of a toddler’s outgrown or your own raggedy woolly tights with scrumpled newspaper balls or unwanted material offcuts or cut-up, worn-out clothes. See if you can model the tights to do the splits so the doorstop will lay flat, then stop your stuffing falling out by sealing the crotch with safety pins, rubber bands or a length of rag used as a ribbon. Attach another loop of ribbon at one end so that you can hang up when not needed.
If you’ve got a fireplace get your children to guess what is the biggest place in the room that could remove heat (clue, it’s big enough for a child to hide in). When they eventually spot it suggest fitting a chimney balloon (see Resources).
Curtains work best if they do not cover radiators and are lined. With your auditors’ help, take notes so you can fix this (pinning lining material to your current curtains with safety pins or staples is an excellent quick fix if you don’t have much time or budget).
Shopping list to banish draughts
At the hardware store
Matches
Brush or sponge draught excluder
Spongy strip window seal
Key and letter box covers
Latex wood floor filler
Rolls of insulating material (look for environmentally friendly options – these could include insulation made from recycled plastic bottles or even sheep’s wool)
Second-hand sources (or borrow, swap, just treat yourself and buy?)
Old curtains, material, blankets
Sewing thread
Internet
Chimney balloon (an inflatable plug to stop heat escaping upwards)
Insulation
If you live in a house (or the top flat) insulating the attic should be a priority. All you need to do is lay insulation material thickly over your attic floor. A typical three-bedroom house will cost around £400 to insulate the attic space, but you will get an annual saving off your fuel bill of about £100 simply by not wasting so much heat through the roof. The more fuel prices go up, the better your savings. You can find out about grants and supplier information from the Energy Saving Trust but you can also buy easy-to-roll out material from DIY stores.
Super-insulation can be fitted internally, externally or between floors and is a much more messy, skilled and expensive job. However if you are doing a big building project it makes sense to spend as much as you can afford on insulation as the comfort level to your home will soar – your house will be less cold in winter and less hot in summer.
Insulating tasks | ||
Task | Easy or difficult? | Cost? |
Insulating your loft | Easy (but you’ll need to clear up the attic first) | Cheap. Grants are available, the job can be staggered and the payback immediate (from reduced heating bills and improved comfort) |
Jacket on your hot water tank | Easy | Low (or wrap up with an unwanted duvet/eiderdown) |
Internal wall insulation | Needs thought – add to any extension or building plans. New materials are appearing – the super-thin, super-insulating Aerogel is the great new material | Expensive if a one-off. No extra cost if part of a building project |
External wall insulation | Expensive but prevents building upheavals, and you will not lose internal floor space | Pricey – though this can be reduced if neighbours network and organise as a group |
Under-floor insulation | Plan when doing major works | A good green choice is Warmcel (treated and torn-up newspapers) used under suspended floors |
Microgeneration
‘I think that if children are brought up in an environmentally responsible home they are more likely to grow into adults who want to run their own homes in a similarly considerate way and that is how you create lasting change: by educating the next generation. The trouble is that there are so many options. We are looking into a wind turbine, a wood pellet boiler, solar PVs on the roof, water butts and a heat exchange system. But some of these things are so expensive and it’s not clear how effective they are. Everyone has a different opinion.’
Liz, 33, with Riley, six, and Bertie, three
Microgeneration is when individuals generate power from renewable sources such as sunlight, water and wind. Good Energy, an independent renewable energy company, has more than 650 home generators registered with them – some homes may get their energy from picturesque watermills but most people just have a couple of solar PV panels on their roof. Although solar panels are an expensive upfront purchase, using them means that you can generate the equivalent of 12 weeks of electricity each year – which you should be able to get reimbursed by your electricity provider.
Solar thermal (which enables the sun to heat up your water) is a popular renewable technology because it gives masses of free hot water when it is hot and sunny, and a limited amount in colder or very cloudy weather. On a bright May or September day the water temperature will be up to 42°C, providing plenty of hot water for washing up, bathing and showering. In August it can go up to nearly 90°C, which means you will need to add cold water.
If you cannot imagine generating your own power, perhaps because you are in a rented home, consider switching to a green energy electricity tariff, ideally one that supplies only renewable energy.
Be your own energy doctor
Now I’ve seen how much energy a roof kitted up with solar panels can generate from the sun, it’s hard not to look at a row of homes with south- or south-west-facing roofs and wonder why these homes aren’t utilising solar power. The answer is that it can be difficult to get information and the setup costs can also be very expensive.
If you have seen The Age of Stupid, a campaigning film launched on a solar-powered screen in Leicester Square, London in 2009, you will already know that poorer families in some countries may need to increase their use of fossil fuels in order to improve living standards and life expectancy. It is also horrible to think that worldwide many under-fives still die from preventable diseases and a lack of clean drinking water. Those of us taking an unfair share need to take less, by making clever energy-efficiency changes now, rather than hoping someone will dream up a solution before it is too late. Governments are attempting to make some progress as the Copenhagen meeting in 2009 showed – and lots of people are behind it. In December that year nearly 50,000 people, including many families, joined a march organised by a coalition of environmental groups, trade unions, faith groups and the Women’s Institute to show their support for cuts in polluting gases and climate justice. Climate change has no naughty step, but there are programmes to help your family cut your carbon dioxide emissions year on year. Go to the Resources section for more information.
‘We know roughly what our carbon footprint is. It’s at the lower end because we choose not to have a car, we have green energy – 100% renewable from Good Energy – have made one room snug and draught-proofed, and use washable nappies. When I talk to other parents I realise that though we don’t do things that differently, I’ve saved huge amounts of money using washable nappies on more than one child and by being willing to accept hand-me-downs. I mean, why wouldn’t you? It makes me very nervous that in the future our children will turn around to our generation and say you had a chance to make the decisions to deal with climate change, and you didn’t. At least I can say that their dad and I were trying.’
Anna, 36, with Freddie, four, and Elsie, two
Once you know your carbon footprint you have a way of measuring your progress as you cut your family’s energy usage (see the Resources section for a selection of helpful sites). General carbon calculators gauge your fossil fuel use. So the less non-renewably sourced electricity you use and the less gas or fuel you burn, to heat your home or travel around, the lower your family’s carbon footprint. The more demanding carbon calculators estimate the amount of energy used to make and transport food and consumer goods that you’ve bought recently (this is known as embedded energy), so prepare for surprises.
Be energy smart
If you’re not sure what eats energy at your house try a week with a smart electric energy monitor that plugs into your main cable (near the fuse box) or an appliance to measure your power consumption. I borrowed one from the library, but they aren’t expensive and can be bought from Good Energy and Natural Collection – see Resources for website details. The best electric energy monitors measure not just in kWh but also in pounds and pence so after a week of doing things you normally do you will know where your family’s weak points are – and at what time. Do you wash away your expensively heated water in the power shower combing playdough out of your hair? Do you ever leave the DVD on standby after a session of In the Night Garden? When your friends came over did you fill the kettle right up for just two cups of raspberry leaf tea? Even without eco-gadgetry, it’s surprisingly simple to make changes to your home and lifestyle that have a beneficial impact on your carbon emissions.
Without government help, upgrading energy supply lines (e.g., from offshore wind farms to the national electricity grid) it is virtually impossible for families plugged into the mains electricity supply, with the usual gadgets – TV, oven, computers, central heating – to drop below seven tonnes, even though this is still five tonnes off a sustainable level.
As few of us manage to live off-grid, it is perhaps comforting to know that you can buy energy generated exclusively by renewable power – wind, sun, wave and hydro – rather than electricity generated by coal-fired, inefficient plants. The best-known renewable energy tariffs for householders is offered by Good Energy. Ask your provider what they offer.
Tips for avoiding batteries
Batteries contain a potpourri of acids and heavy metals which makes them hard to recycle. Ask at the retailer where you bought them if they have a recycling point. Ways of avoiding batteries include:
Choose wind-up toys and products.
Buy (or ask for) a battery recycling kit and get in the habit of using it (great for bike lights).
Buy (or ask for) a wind-up torch – every house needs at least one just in case the power goes off. If it’s dark outside you can have fun games with a toddler making shadows on the wall with your hands – mine loved shadow battles; or just put on wellies, go into the garden and do a light show.
Don’t put in the batteries at all – your child may still enjoy playing with their new toy (or even just its box).
Make up games that are battery-free.
Using Water Efficiently
Over the past decade we’ve seen Carlisle, Leeds and Gloucester town centres flooding during summer. We’ve had some of the wettest summers ever, days with the heaviest rainfall and a burst of heat waves. Yet there are fears that by 2050 Londoners will often have to cope with 40°C spells and other extreme weather events due to climate change. Hotter weather makes plants difficult to grow and can be life-threatening for the old and very young. It also increases the risk of water shortages.