Interview: Jess the Mum

A while ago, I caught up with long-time friend, and eco-savvy mum and teacher, Jess Smith, to hear all about how she manages her love of sustainable living alongside having a tiny, nappied baby. Not being a mother myself, there is a big gap in my knowledge here, and I wanted to post something useful about how to navigate life at a time that is often as awash with plastic as it is with poo. 

Jess has done some great research into everything from nappies and wipes to crockery and bath toys. In our conversation we also sung the praises of hand-me-downs and some good, old-fashioned sharing.

When did you start living more sustainably and why?

I’ve always wanted to be as eco-friendly as possible and to live as sustainably as I could, but over the last few years I’ve been doing a lot with my class at school about plastic pollution. That wasn’t necessarily what the topic was supposed to be about, but one year we just rolled with the children’s interests. It wasn’t long after Blue Planet 2, and we started to do our own campaigns where we’d write to different businesses encouraging them to not use plastic. The children really love it. When it comes to the baby stuff, my aunt and uncle actually used reusable nappies for their daughter several years ago.

It sounds like your family were ahead of their time.

Yeah, I think that’s because my uncle’s main role is in recycling, so he’s always been really conscious of it. My grandma was also very environmentally conscious and was a fan of the Green Party. She had a green burial for her funeral, and that was all pre-planned years ago, so my family has always been environment savvy. 

I had it in my mind that I’d like to try reusable nappies, and I’d had a few conversations with my uncle over the years. He said that there’s talk that the environmental impact of them isn’t always as good, as you’re still doing all of the washing, so it’s a case of balancing the water, the electricity and detergents that you’re using with the impact of disposable nappies. 

But, it takes 500 years for a nappy to decompose. When you think about how many nappies are used every day, I think that is terrifying!

Reusable nappies from Bambino Mio.

How many nappies are used in a day?

I know that if you use one reusable nappy per day for the duration of your baby’s time in nappies, then on average you’ll save 900 nappies per child from landfill. And that’s just if you ditch one disposable nappy per day. I thought, we might not be perfect at this, we might not be able to go for reusable all the time, but we can have an impact. I feel a lot better about not putting 900 nappies into landfill. 

Sometimes we can use two or three a day, and when we’re just at home, we use reusables all the time. When we’re out we use more disposables, but we choose eco-friendly disposables. They cost no more than the big brands, like Pampers, but they do cost a lot more than the supermarket ones.

"I thought, we might not be perfect at this, we might not be able to go for reusable all the time, but we can have an impact"

Did you think it would be difficult, when you had a baby, to carry on being eco-friendly?

We had a few things to help us out in the beginning. Initially I thought, we’ll get settled with her and change as we go. But I do think it’s better if you start as you mean to go on. 

My friends got me some Cheeky Wipes, which are reusable flannels for the baby. They came with a mucky box and a clean box. My husband got really into it! He set it all up before our daughter was born. He even made a little tutorial video and sent it to our NCT class. And as a result, so many people went and bought Cheeky Wipes. 

They’re so much more efficient than a baby wipe, which just sort of disintegrate or screw up, and you get muck all over your hands. It’s much better to use a flannel. So we have a few sets, and we’ve bought them for almost everyone we know who has had a baby. They’ve all loved it. 

Funny enough, two of my friends who are on their second babies didn’t know about Cheeky Wipes before, but they used them for their second babies and they swear by them now. Same with reusable nappies. Even if we go away we take the cheeky wipes boxes with us. 

In just a few years, between them having their first and second babies, it seems that more sustainable products came on the market. But also, more people are talking about it now.

The biggest factor for one of my friends was that she moved to a different council and the bins were only collected once every three weeks. They used to give you an allowance – if you had a baby they would give you a bigger bin, but a lot of councils are now giving families the same sized bin, along with discount vouchers for reusable nappies.

So, she got these vouchers, then contacted me and asked which brand I’d recommend. She got the same brand that we use. The miosolo nappy from Bambino Mio. I think it’s really good that the councils do that, and I was a bit sad that our council doesn’t do it.

Cheeky Wipes out to dry.

That’s such a good initiative. It forces people’s hand, but is that a bad thing?

I think it’s a good thing, I think they should do it more. The nappies are so much easier to use than people think, and my daughter loves them. I have a basket in the corner of the room with all of the clean nappies in. She loves to go and pull them all out and choose which one each teddy is going to wear.

And it becomes a bit of an obsession. A lot of the people I know who use cloth nappies buy a new one when a new print comes out. There are some really lovely designs. 

I’d assumed they were all like white flannel, a bit like the ones Tommy wears in the Rugrats. 

We’ve got some whales, tigers, dragonflies, all sorts. My daughter likes choosing which one to wear. They often have them in Aldi in their special buys section. We’ve got a few in there that are a bit of a bargain. 

When she was first born, she was too small for the nappies we had, but by 12 weeks she was definitely in them most days. We were in lockdown so it was easy to do that. You can buy smaller sized nappies, but for us, it wasn’t worth buying one that was only going to last potentially for five or six weeks before she would be in the other size, which is supposed to take them from birth to potty training.

Bamboo eco rascals cup.

What other sustainable things do you use day-to-day?

We use compostable nappy bags (from Beaming Baby). If we can avoid using a nappy bag, we will, but we try and fit multiple nappies in one bag. You can get big nappy bins for the bedroom, but it’s a plastic bin, with a plastic liner, and you’re putting all your plastic nappies into that, then wrapping them up and making them even harder to decompose. We just take them straight outside to the wheelie bin in compostable sacks. 

We tried to use cotton wool when she was little, because there was a lot of cleaning and washing to do. We also have wash cloths for after mealtimes too. We have a set in the kitchen that we use for wiping up after meal times.

We do have some baby wipes for emergencies for when we’re out and about. They’re as eco-friendly as possible. We use either Beaming Baby ones or Kit & Kin. All of them claim that they’re the most eco-friendly! Beaming Baby nappies take four years to decompose as opposed to 400 years. Kit & Kin has changed its packaging so that can be recycled or biodegrade as well. 

One thing that I haven’t found yet for her age is a bamboo toothbrush. She goes through toothbrushes like they’re going out of fashion! It’s so hard to brush her teeth. It’s like wrestling with a wild lion! We looked at Boots, Superdrug and the Supermarket and haven’t been able to find one. 

"Wooden toys are easy to find, but for bath time, plastic is the go-to. I found a brand that do rubber wood toys"

Are there any other things you’ve had to do a lot of research to find?

We use wooden and bamboo plates and an eco-friendly sustainable wood brand for cups as well. She does have a couple of plastic beakers, but we’ve just bought her a bamboo one with a silicone lid, which she loves. 

And bath toys! Wooden toys are really easy to find, but for bath time, plastic is the go-to. So I found a brand called Plan Toys that do rubber wood toys. So we’ve got her a set of fountain bowls from them.

Bamboo bowl from Kidly.

Do you think as she gets older and wants different toys that it might be hard? 

Definitely! Yesterday I had to buy her a Peppa Pig book as she put it in her mouth in the shop and I thought ‘I can’t put this back on the shelf!’ 

At the moment anything she has that is plastic has been bought by someone else, but I think it’s great when things are bought secondhand. My mum got her a Jumperoo from gumtree for a fiver that had barely been used. We then passed it on to our friends for their daughter. 
I think if you’re going to get something that’s plastic, get something that is going to last for a really long time, and that can be passed on to somebody else, and isn’t just going to be thrown away at the end of a few months.

What about clothes and shoes?

We’ve had a lot of hand-me-downs. I think in terms of where I shop for clothes I could be a bit more savvy. With baby clothes you tend to go through so many so I think it’s good to hand them down to other people. I handed all of my daughter’s clothes to a friend, then she gave them back to me and I gave them all to another friend. Even if we have another baby, these things aren’t going to have enough use for them to be ruined. I’d rather more people have the chance to use them. 

Bath time toys from Plan Toys.

Is there anything you tried that didn’t work?

I tend to persevere! I think most of the stuff we’ve tried, we’ve kept going with. 
One of the things that we did find frustrating was that the eco-friendly baby wipes come out in big clumps. They weren’t very good quality compared to the plastic ones. But I did stick with them, and they’ve actually just changed the way that they make them, so they’re much better now. I’m glad we stuck with it. 

With a lot of products it’s still early days, isn’t it? If people try out the early versions, they fund that company improving the product. Then it will get better and become cheaper to match competitors.

On a lot of children’s online stores for things, sustainability and the environment has such a bigger profile than it ever did before. I shop on Scandiborn or Kidly – on their site you can select eco ranges and they tell you about the product and the qualities behind it. One thing I do find annoying is when you buy products online that are eco-friendly, and they come wrapped in loads of plastic.

I have a box here from the Jojo Maman Bebé sale. It came in a nice paper bag, and then inside, every product was wrapped individually in plastic bags. There is a blog post on their website that says, ‘we know we use plastic bags, and there are things you can do with them to use them again so that they don’t have to go in the bin’. But their suggestions were all things that you just wouldn’t do. I think companies need to get to grips with that. They could put it all in one bag, together. 

Building blocks from Big Jigs Toys.

What other sustainable changes have you made at home?

We use beeswax wraps – in fact we use the ones you made for us! [See full instructions for how to make them here.] We’ve got some others that we haven’t unwrapped from the packet yet, because your ones are still going. We use them on the tops of yogurt pots mostly. We try to use tin foil more than clingfilm as that can be recycled easily. I’ve got a bamboo toothbrush, we’ve switched to pretty much all bars of soap. My husband drills a little hole in his bars of soap so that it becomes ‘soap on a rope’ for the shower. He bulk buys them and has a mass drilling session! He has them all lined up in the drawer ready for when it runs out. 

We also take lunchboxes and drinks bottles to avoid buying anything in plastic when we’re out. I use bars of shampoo and conditioner, but I haven’t found a decent conditioner yet.

The one I use is the Lemon Myrtle one. I find that one really good. I get it in a local shop but it’s also available online.

One thing I do want to get better at is sanitary wear. There’s so much out there now that I’d like to try, but haven’t got round to it yet. It also extends to general purchases. When we went to get a washing basket I made sure we got a wicker one rather than a plastic one. I try to do things like that. And when I’m doing a supermarket shop, I try and order loose things. Another bugbear is when you do an online shop and select no plastic bags, but they still put some things in plastic bags.

Thanks so much for chatting to me, Jess! 

[All photographs © Jessica Smith]