Top Tips for Making Your Nursery More Sustainable

When we think about creating a more sustainable society, we tend to think in terms of the bigger picture—cleaning our oceans, changing our manufacturing practices, and adjusting our fuel consumption.

But we don’t have to wait for society to change to start living more sustainably. We can start in our everyday lives, and we can teach our children about it from the cradle. By following these top tips for making your nursery more sustainable, you can create a healthier room for your babies and a healthier world for everyone else.

Go Reusable

As human beings, we create a lot of trash, and this is especially true of babies. But there are more reusable baby options available than most people realize, and it helps to keep your nursery stocked with them. Opt for eco-friendly, reusable versions of baby products, like silicone bibs or cloth diapers and burp cloths.

Pro Tip

Just because something is reusable doesn’t mean it’s eco-friendly. For instance, we use bottles over and over again, but they’re made of plastic. Swapping to glass or stainless steel bottles is a more sustainable option.

Look for Sustainable Lighting

Our electricity use is one of the biggest factors behind our carbon footprints. We can use less by relying on natural lighting as much as possible. But unless we want to switch to candles, we’ll need lights at certain points. That’s where sustainable lighting comes in.

LED bulbs are far more efficient than incandescent bulbs by cutting down on energy costs, making them a good choice for your nursery. Additionally, dimmer switches allow you to use less than the complete wattage of your bulbs, saving energy. It also offers an energy-efficient alternative to a baby’s night-light.

Choose Eco-Friendly Flooring

Plush carpeting seems like the obvious choice for a room where a small child will be rolling around on the floor. But carpeting is loaded with volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and it tends to trap dust and other contaminants, impacting the surrounding air quality. Other flooring options are less damaging to the air and made with more sustainable materials, such as:

• Bamboo
• Vinyl
• Cork
• Reclaimed wood
• Linoleum

These flooring options also tend to be easier to clean, which gives you more time with your baby.

Use Environmentally Friendly Paint

Oil-based paints tend to belch VOCs into the air. And, contrary to popular belief, these compounds can linger in the air even longer than their smell. Given the sensitivity of infant lungs, this is the last thing that anyone wants where their babies are sleeping.

That’s why, when it comes to making a more sustainable nursery, ECOS Paints wants to make sure you have a variety of non-toxic* paint for cribs available to make your nursery safer and more beautiful.

Non-toxic - Conforms to ASTM-D4236, specifically concerning oral toxicity, skin irritation and respiratory effects.