How to have an eco-friendly baby shower

Whether you’re organising one for a friend, or throwing your own party, baby showers are an American traditional that’s becoming increasingly popular in the UK.

They’re heaps of fun and can be a great opportunity for the Mum-to-be to have some special time with her loved ones gathered together to celebrate her, and her new baby, before the chaos of new parenthood begins.

Like any good party though, party showers can involve a lot of waste. We’ve put together a few tips for a planet-friendly baby shower that won’t harm Mama Nature.

The venue

The first thing to decide on is where to have the shower. Should you look for an outside venue or have the party at home? Hosting a party at home does mean that you can make sure that every element is planned with sustainability in mind. If this isn’t possible, consider a venue that allows you bring your own decorations and even food. Alternatively, look for a place that shares your eco values and shuns the use of single use plastic or perhaps sources its food and beverages sustainably.

The invites

Next up, create your guestlist and start inviting people to the big day. Paperless invites are best for the planet, but this doesn’t mean they can’t be pretty or creative. If designing is simply not your forte, you can gain inspiration by looking for ideas online using sites like Pinterest. To make creating your own invites even easier, you can also find lots of free invitation templates online. Try sites like Canva that enable you to personalise pre-designed electronic invites that can be emailed or shared with your guests on WhatsApp.

The catering

While washing up or stacking the dishwasher isn’t much fun, single use plates and cups, especially those made from plastic, are bad news for the planet. Instead, consider serving small finger food without plates, or use your own plates and dishes, as well as reusable cups and glasses. If you’re hosting the party at home and don’t have enough crockery or cutlery, see if you can borrow from friends or family.

Whatever drinks you serve, most parties offer guests water. Instead of individual plastic bottles of water, you could serve refreshing iced water in jugs, infused with juicy looking fruit slices or mint leaves. The same goes for juices. If you’re having an afternoon tea themed party, pretty teapots can make great centrepieces on the tables.

Prepack sandwiches and cakes come in a lot of wrapping so making your own food is a good way to save on lots of plastic packaging. If this feels like too much to take on, consider asking friends and family members to pitch in, bake cupcakes or quiches and cut sandwiches. Preparing for a party together can be fun.

This is a difficult one, as you don’t want guests to go hungry, but try not to over cater, resulting in lots of leftover food. Sit and think about the numbers and consider, realistically, what people are likely to eat. That said, most parties do end up with some food left behind– even with careful planning. As they leave, encourage your guests to take extra cake, sandwiches etc. home with them to cutdown on food waste.

The decorations

All parties look better with pretty decorations and dressing a room for an event is often the most exciting part. However, most traditional party decorations – balloons, party poppers and confetti often involve lots of single-use plastic that’s then thrown away when the party is over. Ditch the balloons and instead opt for fabric bunting, twinkling candles in old jam jars and homemade paper streamers. Items found in nature can also make beautiful decorations so consider getting crafty with things such as shells, feathers and pine cones. Floral displays can look stunning but consider replacing cut flowers with the dried variety which can be used time and again around your home or for other celebrations.

The gifts

In the US, it’s common to have a baby registry, much like a wedding list, to guide guests on what you need for your new bundle of joy and avoid unwanted items. A list tied to a particular shop can be limited so, instead, you could consider making your own list using website such as myregistry.com which helps you create a universal baby registry. A universal registry means new parents truly can ask for just what they want, because they enable you can add any item from any store in the world—both online and brick-and-mortar.

Babies do create a lot of waste and some of it is unavoidable, but it is possible to be a green parent. When it comes to choosing items for your list, you opt for brands that have sustainable options or are designed to help parents make more positive choices for the planet. Here are a few ideas:

Baby clothes

Did you know that 183 million pieces of outgrown baby clothes are stashed in UK homes?

It’s true, according to baby rental company Bundlee. That’s why the forward-thinking company hit upon the idea of creating a sustainable baby clothes rental service for modern parents wanting to do the best for their babies and their planet.

Babies grow so quickly! And it can be easy to lose sight of just how much cost and waste goes into replacing their whole wardrobe every few months.  Renting provides an easy way for parents to ensure that you always have the right size clothes to hand, with no stockpiling the next size up or worrying about what to do with outgrown clothes. As well as being better for the planet, renting cuts down on clutter too! Bundlee offers a gifting option that is perfect for baby showers.

Plastic-free baby wipes

Reduce your plastic waste by opting for plastic-free baby wipes. 90% of wipes in the UK contain hidden plastic and these plastic-containing wipes can take up to 100 years to break down in landfill. Pura’s wipes are 100% plastic-free and are Allergy UK accredited and affordable so you don’t have to choose between caring for your baby or your planet.

Eco-friendly nappies

Disposable nappies provide a super convenient, affordable and effective way to keep your baby’s bottom clean.

But every day, 8 million disposable nappies are thrown into landfill in the UK. Each one takes hundreds of years to degrade – long outliving the babies they were used on. In response, there’s a lot of sustainable innovation happening in the baby care sector right now, to try to minimise the impact of caring for babies.

Eco-friendly or eco nappies are those that have been developed to try to minimise the impact on the planet by using more sustainable materials and/or manufacturing processes. At Pura, we’ve doing both. That’s why we are proud to have received the EU Ecolabel – an accreditation that certifies products with a guaranteed, independently-verified low environmental impact. We also recycle nappies through our Pura NappiCycle partnership.

When it comes to what goes into our nappies, wherever possible, we’ve replaced plastics and non-renewable materials with more sustainable ones such as cotton in the back sheet. Or in our super absorbent core, which totally contains chlorine-free, FSC® certified wood pulp from sustainably managed forests.

Our nappies are manufactured in a carbon neutral plant, which means we have calculated how much carbon our manufacturing process creates, reduced it where possible, for example by powering the plant with renewable electricity and ensuring no production waste goes to landfill; then we have offset any unavoidable carbon emissions. And our packaging is 100% recyclable.

When you order from mypura.com our products are delivered to your door using providers who are also on a mission to cut emissions. 

Share toys

Baby toys, even those designed for newborns, are often made with plastic. They can also be expensive and take up a lot of space. So sharing or reusing toys via borrowing or renting can benefit you and your planet. It also contributes to the creation of a circular economy – by sharing we reduce the need for manufacturing new toys, which conserves resources and energy and reduces waste.  

Like with baby clothes, you can accept hand-me-downs or swap toys with friends and family or try a rental service like Toy Box Club. Created by Mums, this service aims to help other parents keep their homes cleaner and greener. Before delivery to your house, all toys undergo a rigorous cleaning process using non-toxic and bio-degradable cleaning products so you can also be assured they’re clean and safe for your baby.

Wrapping paper

There’s no denying that gift look great wrapped in shiny paper. Unfortunately, most wrapping paper is not recyclable and so is used once and discarded in landfill. The good news is, there are many alternative ways to wrap presents that have a much smaller impact on the environment. Ask your guests to get imaginative and bring any gifts without traditional wrapping paper. They could instead use a reusable gift bag, leftover fabric or paper and string. To make it fun, you could offer a prize for the most imaginatively wrapped gift.

The games

Not just for kids, to really get the party going, games will make the baby shower one to remember. Not only are they fun, but they also serve as icebreakers and bring together guests who don’t know each other - making sure nobody feels like a wallflower. Here are some ideas for silly and eco-friendly games:

Best eco-wrapped gift

Select three people to look at the pile of gifts that have been wrapped in an eco-friendly manner. Get them to choose the most imaginatively wrapped gift and have the mum-to-be choose her favourites from the shortlist.

Who knows mummy best?

Gather as much info as you can about the mum-to-be and then see which guest knows mummy best through a series of fun questions.

The favours

These days, it’s popular to give baby shower guests a gift as a thank you for joining the celebration. Forget plastic knickknacks that may initially amuse but are then thrown away after the party. With a little bit of thought and effort, they are many useful and sustainable baby shower favours that will put a smile on guests faces without harming the planet. If someone in the family loves to bake, why enlist them into a spot of jam making so you can give guests little jars of toothsome homemade jam or perhaps cookies or cupcakes? Seed packs that will grow into pretty flowers or naturally made soaps and reusable tote bags also make wonderful gifts that guests will get lots of use out of.

The Guestbook

Just like at a wedding, baby shower guestbooks are a lovely keepsake and can be treasured for decades to come. Look for books made from recycled paper or alternatives such as handwritten messages on a blank canvas filled with messages penned or drawn by loved ones.

When to have a baby shower?

It’s always difficult to plan a party that everyone can attend, and with baby showers you have the added complication that babies hardly ever arrive on their due date! This, and considering that the last few weeks of pregnancy can be a tiring and uncomfortable time for the expectant mum, can mean that the best time to host a baby shower is around four to six weeks before the due date. You really wouldn’t want the baby shower to be interrupted by an early arrival! If you’re planning the event for a friend or relative, consult with her on a time she’ll feel most comfortable with.

To play it super safe, some people even prefer to have a baby shower after the baby has arrived. This allows the mum-to-be to show off her new bundle of joy too.

Whenever you chose, we wish a wonderful party! If you have any further ideas for an eco-friendly baby shower, don’t forget to share them with us on our social channels.

Enjoy!