Throw a Green Baby Shower
If the hostess of each baby shower given for the four-million-plus babies born in the U.S. each year each added just one green, eco-friendly aspect…We’ll stop there. No need to preach to the choir; you’re reading this because you’re interested in a green baby shower. The question is, how do you do it?
Baby showers come in all different shapes and sizes, but thankfully there are plenty of ways to throw a fabulous green celebration to give your baby (or babies) a warm, eco-friendly welcome. We’ve compiled a variety of green tips in eight areas of baby shower planning to provide low-impact options no matter what kind of baby shower you’re having. At the end of this post you’ll also find helpful links to follow up on to make your green baby shower a success!
1: Invitations
100% Post Consumer Recycled Invitation by Paper Culture*
Go paperless and save paper, postage and emissions from transportation. If you prefer paper, use recycled paper with the highest available post-consumer recycled content or tree-free papers. You can also mix these two ideas together by making a single paper invitation, then scanning it and sending it via email. (view details)
2: Decorations
Decorate with things that can do double duty and be reused in other ways: Hang up a clothes line of secondhand baby clothes and send them home with the mom-to-be at the end of the shower; use potted plants that can be sent home with guests or redistributed throughout your home; put organic, seasonal fruit in glass bowls (these can also go home with guests), cover tables with fabric tablecloths, then layer receiving blankets on top to add color, pattern or contrast.
Photo Courtesy of Scrapping with Liz
Repurpose items that may be headed for the landfill. For example, stained baby clothes can be cut up and transformed into a pennant banner or fabric garland. If you have a collection of re-used wrapping paper or gift bags that match your theme, these can also be cut into shapes or strung up to make a decorative banner. Make tissue paper collected from previous celebrations into pom pom decorations. Repurpose old book pages into decorative rosettes. Try “shopping” in all the rooms of your home to find items to decorate with or buy decorative accessories at a thrift store and donate them back after the party. (view details)
3: Servingwear
The best choice is to use washable plates, cups, silverware, and cloth napkins. If you don’t have enough place settings in your cupboards, consider purchasing used serving-wear at a thrift store and then donating it back after the party. The pieces don’t have to match exactly as long as they all fit within a general theme. If you stick to finger foods, you’ll have one less thing to think about since silverware won’t be necessary. Don’t have enough cups? That’s okay, drinking out of repurposed glass jars is a popular party touch.
Photo Courtesy of Make It Perfect
If reusable place settings aren’t an option, consider recycled paper napkins (look for a high percentage of post-consumer waste and a lack of dyes or harsh chemicals in the manufacturing process) and biodegradable/compostable plates, cups and utensils. Make sure these items are not mixed in with the regular garbage, as they require special composting conditions in a home compost or commercial facility to biodegrade properly. To make sure everyone’s compostable items stay out of the trash, provide several containers for recyclables and compost and only one or none for trash. Include a list of compostable items (plates, forks, napkins, food, etc.) on the compost containers so that shower guests don’t have to guess which items are compostable.
Also have a system for guests to label their drinks so they are not using extra cups or leaving unfinished drinks due to mix-ups of which beverage belongs to who. If your beverages require straws, try glass, stainless steel, or paper straws rather than plastic. (view details)
4: Food and Refreshments
Photo Courtesy of Post Punk Kitchen
There are a variety of ways to create eco-friendly baby shower edibles. Visit your local farmer’s market or CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to shop local, seasonal and organic when possible. Consider omitting meat from the menu, as the production of meat products requires a great deal of water, land and fossil fuel and often pollutes water, air and soil. If you’ll be serving dishes that include meat, look for labels like grass fed, pastured or free range, and no antibiotics or hormones. Take a vegetarian spread a step further by removing all animal products (like eggs, milk, and butter) to create a vegan meal. (view details)
5: Games and Activities
Provide guests with paper or stationary made from post-consumer recycled materials or tree-free paper to write a note to the baby. Consider having each guest choose a different age at which the note will be written for. Onesie painting is also a popular baby shower activity. To keep it eco-friendly, use secondhand, hand-me-down, and/or organic baby clothes and repurposed or scrap fabric and non-toxic paint for decorating. If you are using new clothes, look for fabrics with a lower environmental impact like organic cotton, hemp or bamboo linen.
Photo Courtesy of Seakettle
If you’re looking for some activities to get people moving, relay races and timed challenges can also provide good green fun. For a baby themed relay, teams can compete for the fastest time in a variety of baby care tasks (using a doll or stuffed animal), such as diapering, putting baby into a wearable baby carrier, changing clothes, and taking baby for a stroller ride. Borrow two or more sets of the necessary baby gear from friends or attendees. Racing on children’s ride on toys or trikes is another racing option. The multitasking challenge is also a fun timed activity. String up a clothesline for guests to pin up a set of secondhand baby clothes, all while holding a baby doll (or stuffed animal) and talking on the phone. The guest with the fastest time is the winner. (view details)
6: Gifts
People get excited about the arrival of a new baby and one of the ways they like to celebrate is by giving gifts. Encore Baby Registry fits perfectly into the green baby shower theme by allowing expectant parents to register for a mix of new, secondhand and hand-me-down items on loan or to keep. The flexibility of Encore Baby Registry also allows for eco-friendly gifts like the gift of time (help preparing the nursery or dog-walking after baby is born), homemade gifts (a nursing cover, a homemade meal), gifts of experience (parent-child music classes or a family photography session), and “fund” type gifts (college fund, diaper service fund, or green cleaning service fund). This all amounts to fewer resources used and less waste.
Photo Courtesy of How About Orange
Guests can wrap gifts in materials that are recycled, repurposed, reused, and/or reusable. The concept of a Japanese Furoshiki, or wrapping cloth, can be used to wrap gifts with a variety of cloth baby items: receiving blanket, bath towel, wrap carrier, cloth diaper, nursing cover, crib sheet, playmat, car seat or stroller cover-up. Wrapping paper can be made out of repurposed items like the newspaper (especially the comics, family section, or other related pages), children’s book pages (this is a great repurposing idea for damaged books that would otherwise be thrown out), and outdated parenting books (with the bonus of providing entertainment when the old advice is read aloud). (view details)
7: Party Favors
Don’t forget to consider the intangible when thinking about what to send home with your baby shower guests. The biggest party favors your guests will take with them are the memories of the celebration, which will last much longer than a material chotchky and won’t take up any space in the closet or the landfill. To give these memories a boost, send pictures from the baby shower to your guests via email.
Photo Courtesy of Creative Kismet
If you prefer to give a more tangible party favor, you still have several eco-friendly options. Give something edible that won’t end up in the landfill. Either make the favors yourself or purchase local, organic and/or fair trade goodies. Give to charity in the name of guests. If you provide a written card with information about the charity, use repurposed, post-consumer recycled or tree-free papers. Combine the first two suggestions and give an edible favor whose purchase supports a good cause. Decorate the party with small potted plants that can be given to guests as favors. Send guests home with a recipe that uses local ingredients and a single ingredient, like a small jar of local honey or a local spice mix. Make origami favors using repurposed, post-consumer recycled or tree-free papers. Consider writing a note or poem inside each favor. (view details)
8: Thank You Notes
Photo Courtesy of Homework – Today’s Assignment: Be Inspired
Unlike baby shower invitations, thank you notes are not a place for electronic correspondence. Make your own thank you notes using post-consumer recycled or repurposed materials or purchase them from a company that uses post-consumer recycled or non-tree papers (hemp, banana leaves, bamboo, etc.). If buying thank you cards, look for a company who’s green practices go beyond their products and into their overall operations (using non-toxic cleaners and energy efficient lighting and electronics in their business office, practicing eco-conscious packing and shipping methods, etc.) (view details)
To help you implement the green baby shower tips listed above, we’ve compiled a list of links to help you make or buy all kinds of eco friendly baby shower accessories.
Invitations
Check out these sites for online invitations: Paperless Post, Pingg, and Evite.
Pre-consumer vs post-consumer waste for recycled products: what makes things made with recycled post-consumer waste more eco-friendly?
Pre-consumer waste is waste that has not yet reached the customer (like holes punched out of binder paper and misshapen yogurt cups). Post-consumer waste has already been used by the consumer (like written-on binder paper, and yogurt cups with the contents eaten). Pre-consumer waste is easier to recycle because it is already clean, sorted and on-location, making it a regular part of the manufacturing business, regardless of a company’s eco-friendly policies or lack thereof. Conversely, post-consumer waste will go into the landfill if not collected, sorted, cleaned, and sent off to someone who’s willing to turn it into something else.
Affiliate Link, Paper Culture
For paper invitations, Paper Culture* makes “modern eco stationary” using 100% post-consumer recycled paper. Their eco-friendly ethics go beyond their pledge that no new trees will be cut down for their stationery by reducing their environmental impact in all aspects of business operations (like using CFL light bulbs in the office and nontoxic cleaners in their staff kitchen) and planting a tree for every order. Cut out even more emissions by having the invitations sent directly to your shower guests with Paper Culture’s free mail and message service (you only pay the cost of stamps). Get $5 off your first order with code ECOMOD.
Another option, Tiny Prints*, uses paper that is FSC certified or made from 30% post-consumer waste for all of their products. Tiny Prints also offers free mailing service to send shower invitations directly to your guests (you only pay the cost of stamps)
See our links for tree-free papers here
Decorations
Read our Top 5 + 1 ideas for where to get secondhand baby stuff for places to get secondhand baby clothes to use as decorations
Make your own fabric pennant banner/bunting or garland using repurposed baby clothes or fabric scraps or with recycled paper and string. Create a no-sew banner with repurposed fabric.
Purchase reusable cloth pennant bunting on Etsy by using search terms like, pennant banner, pennant bunting, and pennant banner bunting and use the “Shop Location” option on the left to look for shops near you
Make your own recycled paper garland
Make your own tissue paper poms, tissue paper flowers, or recycled newspaper poms
Make your own repurposed book page rosettes, or repurposed book page rosettes with scrap paper embelishments
Servingwear and Place Settings
Keep track of drinks with re-purposed and reusable mini-chalkboard tags
Offer reusable glass straws handmade in the U.S.A. by Glass Dharma or Strawsome or stainless steel straws by The Mulled Mind (also handmade in the U.S.A.)
Paper straws are also an improvement over plastic. Try an Etsy search for “paper straw” and use the “Shop Location” option on the left to look for shops near you
Food and Refreshments
Learn more about CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture) and look for a CSA near you through the United States Deportment of Agriculture (USDA) CSA page
Use the USDA or Local Harvest websites to search for a farmers’ market near you for local, seasonal ingredients
Find some great vegan recipes on these sites: The Post Punk Kitchen, 101 Cookbooks, and Chef Chloe
Check out a vegan cookbook from your local library or buy a copy secondhand:
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Games and Activities
Tips for setting up the baby clothes painting activity
Places to find baby clothes for Onesie/bodysuit decorating:
- Read our Top 5 + 1 ideas for where to get secondhand baby stuff for places to get secondhand baby clothes
- Hemp and Organic Cotton Snappies by Earth Creations, made with natural clay dies in the U.S.A. by workers getting paid fair wages (read more about Earth Creations’ social responsibility)
- Gerber 4-Pack Organic Onesies Brand
on Amazon*
For activities that require paper, take a look at these tree-free and post-consumer waste recycled papers:
- Stationary and paper made by New Leaf using 100% post-consumer waste and a chlorine free production process
- Green Field Paper Company sells hemp paper, as well as 100% post-consumer recycled papers with no chemicals, dyes or additives (like their 100% JunkMail Collection)
- Rawganique makes paper, stationary and card stock from a blend of 25% hemp and 75% post-consumer recycled paper in the U.S.A. with fair labor practices
- PooPooPaper and Mr. Ellie Pooh Paper make paper products from animal poo (and no, it doesn’t stink). Both companies support elephant preservation and employ fair labor practices to make their handmade 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper products.
For more active fun, check out this March Madness meets NASCAR tricycle race
Gifts
Use Encore Baby Registry to register for secondhand, hand-me-down, new, and non-material gifts on loan or to keep.
Recycled, repurposed and/or reusable gift wrapping ideas:
- Furoshiki instructions from the Japanese Government and Furoshiki.com for wrapping items with cloth
- Make post-consumer recycled paper flowers to decorate packages
- Make post-consumer recycled gift bows out of old magazines
- Make post-consumer recycled origami bows out of old magazines
Party Favors
Share pictures of the baby shower with guests online using Flickr, Shutterfly*, or Snapfish.
Edible baby shower favors that give back:
- 5% of every sale of Eli’s Earth Bars from Sjaak’s Organic Chocolates goes to non-profits that benefit children. These organic, fair trade and vegan candy bars are made by a family owned and operated business that also offers a wide variety of other organic, fair trade, vegan, and non-vegan chocolates.
- Endangered Species Chocolates gives 10% of their net profits to fund species and habitat conservation efforts. Their all natural, organic chocolate is made with cocoa that is shade grown with ethical labor (fair wages and healthy working conditions) on co-op and family owned properties.
Browse Ebay’s World of Good store for a variety of fair trade, eco-friendly, organic, handmade, and recycled goods (view by category
).
Make your own bagged favors using biodegradable and compostable cello bags.
Thank You Notes
Make your own thank you notes with these tree-free and post-consumer waste recycled papers:
- Stationary and paper made by New Leaf using 100% post-consumer waste and a chlorine free production process
- Green Field Paper Company sells hemp paper, as well as 100% post-consumer recycled papers with no chemicals, dyes or additives (like their 100% JunkMail Collection)
- Rawganique makes paper, stationary and card stock from a blend of 25% hemp and 75% post-consumer recycled paper in the U.S.A. with fair labor practices
- PooPooPaper and Mr. Ellie Pooh Paper make paper products from animal poo (and no, it doesn’t stink). Both companies support elephant preservation and employ fair labor practices to make their handmade 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper products.
If you prefer to purchase thank you cards, Paper Culture* makes “modern eco stationary” using 100% post-consumer recycled paper. Their eco-friendly ethics go beyond their pledge that no new trees will be cut down for their stationery by reducing their environmental impact in all aspects of business operations (like using CFL light bulbs in the office and nontoxic cleaners in their staff kitchen) and planting a tree for every order. Get $5 off your first order with code ECOMOD.
Pre-consumer vs post-consumer waste for recycled products: what makes things made with recycled post-consumer waste more eco-friendly?
Pre-consumer waste is waste that has not yet reached the customer (like holes punched out of binder paper and misshapen yogurt cups). Post-consumer waste has already been used by the consumer (like written-on binder paper, and yogurt cups with the contents eaten). Pre-consumer waste is easier to recycle because it is already clean, sorted and on-location, making it a regular part of the manufacturing business, regardless of a company’s eco-friendly policies or lack thereof. Conversely, post-consumer waste will go into the landfill if not collected, sorted, cleaned, and sent off to someone who’s willing to turn it into something else.
*Encore Baby Registry is an affiliate of Paper Culture, Tiny Prints, Shutterfly and Amazon
