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30.08.2024

Time to read

10 min

5 tips for more responsible choices for families with children

Everyday environmental initiatives do not require major changes or huge effort. We’ve put together five easy tips for every family with children to help you make more responsible choices without even noticing.

1. Planning your food purchases

More than 100 million kilos of food are thrown away in Finnish households every year, which means an average of 20-25 kilos of food wasted per person. The easiest way to reduce your family’s waste is to take a few moments to plan your weekly menu and only buy the amount of food you know you will use up before the best-before date. One great option is to save a few variations of your family’s shopping lists in an online grocery store and order the tried and tested items straight to your door, without the need for hungry impulse shopping.

Homegrown harvest vegetables and a plant-based diet is an environmental act. When food comes from local sources, it has significantly lower emissions compared to foreign produce. It is easy to monitor the carbon footprint of your own purchases, for example through loyalty programs or the bank’s own app. It’s a good idea to keep food quantities in proportion to family size and eating habits. For a family of three, it makes no sense to cook for six, and it is not worth preparing food for several days if the leftovers are always left untouched in a plastic box at the back of the fridge. It’s also a good idea to pay attention to portion sizes – put only the amount you’re sure you’ll like on your plate, you can always take more.

2. Recycle with glory

There is a huge amount of clothing, sports equipment and other age-appropriate items that are constantly left small and unnecessary in families with children. Local neighbourhood social media groups are a great way to get rid of these and buy much-needed equipment to replace them. By minimising the need to buy completely new items, you save on raw materials, natural resources and energy. Recycling also reduces water, air and land pollution caused by waste disposal.

3. Moomin Baby diapers are a soft choice for nature

Finnish Moomin Baby diapers are carbon neutral. The diapers are manufactured in Finland’s only diaper factory using electricity generated by hydroelectricity and solar power. None of the waste from diaper production ends up in landfill, it is all recycled or incinerated and used as energy.

Moomin Baby diapers are made from clean and safe raw materials and do not use unnecessary chemicals such as fragrances or oils. The finished diapers are packaged in a bag made from 60% recycled plastic, which can be recycled in plastic recycling. Moomin Baby diapers are manufactured in Finland, which means that the distance from the factory to the shops is short and the logistics do not unnecessarily burden the environment.

4. Move wisely

Everyday life for a family with children involves a lot of travelling to work, hobbies, shopping and sometimes even holidays. It makes perfect sense to swap short car trips to the shops for cycling and to use public transport whenever possible. Did you know that by cycling 100 km per week with an electric bike you can reduce your carbon footprint by 9% per year?

When on holiday, it makes sense to favour domestic tourism and local destinations. Travelling by train or boat is always less environmentally damaging than flying. If you are flying on holiday, always choose direct flights without stopovers and make one longer long-haul trip rather than several shorter ones. By choosing home accommodation such as AirBnB instead of a hotel, you can reduce your carbon footprint by 1% for just five days of your holiday.

5. More sustainability at home

Did you know that by washing only full washing machines and halving the number of washes per week, you save on water consumption and don’t waste energy on heating your domestic hot water and running your washing machine? By switching to an environmentally friendly detergent, you can reduce your carbon footprint by half a percent per year, the equivalent of 200 car kilometres. And remember that for many clothes, airing rather than washing is sufficient, and in summer, instead of using a tumble dryer, it’s a good idea to prefer line drying.

The indoor temperature in the home is too high for many Finns. By lowering the temperature by one degree, this equates to 5% of heating costs. Lower temperatures save money, improve sleep and improve indoor air quality. The underfloor heating in the bathroom often runs too hot for many people every day of the year; using underfloor heating only when necessary saves money and energy is not wasted.

Sources: kuluttajaliitto.fi/en/, sitra.fi/en/ and martat.fi/in-english/

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