Outside a home on the south side of Bellingham, a hybrid car sits parked near a small tree as a natural wood gate sways open to a set of stairs that lead to a warmly lit porch. Inside, the distinct sound of a toddler running the length of the living room resonates off the walls, his voice bouncing with his steps.
Aundrea McBride’s 2-year-old son, Aiden, a curly-haired blond, picks up a plastic drill and starts slamming it onto his toy worktable. A guy on the go, Aiden runs everywhere, seeming to love the sound of his bouncy voice.
As the human population approaches 6.5 billion, the way people live — and the way they raise their children — has significant implications for the environment. Some parents use unconventional parenting techniques to alleviate human impact on the Earth. They buy secondhand clothing, avoid plastic toys, use cloth or chlorine-free diapers and feed their children local organic foods.
McBride said this philosophy is aimed at keeping things simple and lightening the load on the environment.
‘Loved-in’ clothes
"Consignment stores rock," McBride said. "And sharing stuff around to different families is pretty normal with our group of friends."
McBride said she shops at consignment stores instead of buying new items because the reused clothes are still in good condition. Also, reusing materials is a way to use fewer resources and lessen the demand for new products.
Courtney Laws, the wellness director at the organic-food store Terra Organica, also shops at consignment stores to find clothes and toys for her 7-year-old daughter, Sophia.
"We try to stay away from clothing for children made by children," Laws said. "We try to recycle as much as possible."
At Wee Ones Reruns, a children’s consignment store, clothing fills every room. The store also sells toys, cribs, sunglasses and many other possessions a child might need.
"Children change sizes every six months when they get older, and babies change every three months," owner Kathy McCrady said. "So they outgrow their clothes so fast that it makes sense to buy (used)." McCrady said the store receives approximately 500 items daily, creating a wide variety of choices.
"In terms of the entire nature of recycling, we do that all day long, so that (the clothes and toys) won’t end up in a landfill," McCrady said. "I know people who will just toss a shirt because they don’t know how to sew on a button."
Wee Ones Reruns accepts items from local families, which McCrady said is the ultimate example of buying local. Parents can bring in old gear and when it sells, receive cash or credit they can use for their child’s next size, McCrady said.
Entertaining change
When it comes to toys, McCrady said the demand for wooden and non-electronic ones is on the rise.
"A lot of people want classic toys that are old-fashioned," McCrady said. "People want quality items to give to their children."
McBride said it is difficult to find toys with minimal plastic that won’t fall apart with repeated use.
"Some toys just can’t take the banging he puts them through," McBride said with a chuckle. "Wooden toys tend to be more durable."
Many soft plastic toys contain phthalates — also known as plasticizers — to provide flexibility. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center For Environmental Research, these volatile molecules can escape from plastics and pose a health risk. The European Union banned the use of six common phthalates in toys intended for children under the age of three.
At A Little Darling School in Bellingham, the staff uses as many wooden toys as possible. Netta Darling, the co-owner and manager, said she and her staff try to purchase toys that have been played with before, yet she sees plastic as an inevitable material at her school.
"A major part of plastic is that when they play with a toy that’s plastic, I can wash it in the dishwasher …" Darling said. "Otherwise I’d be Murphy Soap-ing every wooden toy."
Laws said purchasing toys made with natural materials was an important decision she made for Sophia.
"Because of the way we raised her … we try to give her toys that use natural materials," Laws said. "It’s easier on the Earth and holds a certain artistically aesthetic quality. I mean, she has teddy bears and such things, but we’re not dogmatic about it."
Clash of the diapers
In a quiet Bellingham neighborhood near Broadway Park on a muggy and overcast day, Sophia sits on her mother’s lap. The two almost match, Sophia points out, with the same corduroy pants in slightly different hues of pink. Her long brown hair waves in tendrils.
Courtney Laws said she used disposable diapers on Sophia approximately half of the time.
"We were always on the go, so the convenience factor was there, and (Sophia) was born in Boulder, Colorado, and there was access to a diaper service," Laws said.
Parents must decide whether to use cloth or disposable diapers. According to the book "50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth," in the 1980s disposable diapers consumed 1,265,000 metric tons of wood pulp and 75,000 metric tons of plastic each year. Americans also threw away 18 billion disposable diapers a year during that time frame. In the authors’ independent study, these figures gave rise to an increase in the use of cloth diapers.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, however, cloth and disposable diapers are equally detrimental to the environment because of the energy necessary to wash cloth diapers. The union recommended choosing whichever type of diaper makes the most sense to parents in terms of convenience, cost and child comfort.
McBride said she chose cloth diapers because she wants to control what types of chemicals Aiden comes in contact with and because they are reusable. At night, though, he wears non- chlorinated disposable diapers.
"He’s been wearing (disposables) overnight since he was 18 months old because he pees at so much volume that it’s hard to keep him in cloth diapers,"
McBride said. McBride said that after her $400 investment in cloth diapers, she washed them at home with petroleum-free detergent. They have circulated to friends to the extent that they are on their fourth child.
In comparison, according to estimates by Ohio State University Extension, disposable diapers cost approximately $50 each month. If used for two years, disposable diapers could cost $1,200 for each child.
Organic snacks
Laws and McBride said the biggest environmental factor in their children’s lives is what they eat.
Laws packs a lunch each morning for Sophia. Although she can’t always watch what her child eats, she said Sophia eats only organic food at home.
"We go to the farmers market, and she knows all the farmers there, and we know that they raise their crops responsibly without harmful chemicals to the environment," Laws said. "We eat organic as much as possible because on one hand, we don’t want to expose her to toxic chemicals through non-organic foods, and on the other, we’d like to tread a little more lightly on the Earth."
As a child brought up eating mostly organic foods, Sophia said she can taste the difference between organic and non-organic.
"I eat food that doesn’t have chemicals because it makes you healthy and tastes better," Sophia said.
Organic modeling
Darling said she has felt strongly about serving organic food to her students ever since opening her school.
"We try to keep things on a simple level, and caring for our bodies and making sure you’re focusing on nutritional modeling is important," Darling said. "Children follow the example that’s been set before them."
As raising children has been a part of Darling’s life for 10 years, she said that being responsible to the body is being responsible to the Earth.
"We like to think that we have a whole-system design, which is not just thinking about organic foods," Darling said. "It’s one, everything comes local. Two is buying organic foods. Three, that the food is made by all of us. Four, we eat all together, and five, that we believe that we are planting the seeds of responsibility and that we’re all growing together."