For those who care a lot about the environment, raising a baby is another opportunity to live life in a way that benefits environmental wellness. One woman, Keya Chatterjee, claims to have been able to reduce her carbon footprint to zero when she had her son Siddarth. She also says that looking after the wellbeing of the environment has meant that she saved a significant amount of money.
You might not think it of a tiny baby, but they can have a huge impact on the health of the environment. Each baby, for example, produces an enormous quantity of dirty nappies, which go into landfill.
Keya Chatterjee works for the World Wildlife Fund as the senior director for renewable energy and footprint so she has a strong background in protecting the environment, and felt that it was her responsibility as a parent and environmental protector to make sure that her baby did not have a detrimental effect on the environment.
When she became pregnant, she made sure that she made choices in all aspects of baby care that would have a beneficial effect on the environment. She then compiled a book about her discoveries called The Zero Footprint Baby: How to Save the Planet While Raising a Healthy Baby.
Keya considers it a responsibility to her child to look after the environment, as it is the world that they will be living in in the future. She made a number of decisions, such as replacing all her light bulbs with LED’s, inserting solar panels into her house, had a midwife-led birth and went to a birthing centre. She also had a baby shower but only accepted second-hand items rather than letting anyone buy her new products for the baby.