Welcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!
This post was written as part of The Breastfeeding Cafe’s Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today’s post is about the environment and breastfeeding. Please read the other blogs in today’s carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 18th through the 31st!
Breastfeeding and the environment
How much consideration did I give the environment when I decided that I am going to breastfeed? Most of us will probably admit that it isn’t the deciding factor, it is doing what is best for our children. I consider myself environmentally conscious. I take short showers, use re-usable bags at the grocery store and I never leave a light on unnecessarily. I also know that there are many other things I could and should be doing to make the world a more sustainable place. I am ten weeks pregnant with my first child. I have a long wait, but I am very excited to breastfeed! After a little research for this blog subject, I can now appreciate how breastfeeding contributes to supporting our environment, as well as all that other good stuff! Here are just a few, interesting ways breastfeeding contributes to the green movement:
Artificial feeding means more tampons
Women who practice total, unrestricted breastfeeding average over 14 months without menstruating. Multiply this by the four million US births each year to see that over one billion sanitary products annually could be kept out of our nation’s landfills and sewers. Manufacturing the additional menstrual pads and tampons involves the need for fibers, bleaching and other chemical processes, packaging materials, and fuels. I find this very interesting. The idea that breastfeeding impacts potentially a billion items not going in landfills is not an obvious fact, but there it is.
The manufacturing of the packaging of artificial baby milk creates toxins and uses paper, plastic, and tin. Most of us already know this one, but the numbers are astounding. For every 3 million bottle-fed babies, 450 million tins of formula are consumed. The resulting 70,000 tons of metal in the form of discarded tins is not recycled. The 550 million tins of artificial baby milk sold each year to bottle feed US babies alone stacked end to end would circle the earth one and a half times; 550 million tins equals 86,000 tons of tin and 1,230 tons of paper labels. It is a pretty convincing argument to give breastfeeding a go. Even if you add up the accessories (the breast pump, nursing shirt and bra, nipple cream, etc) that come along with breastfeeding the financial and environmental impact just don’t compare.
Breast milk is a natural and renewable resource. It is interesting to think of it in this light. Breastfeeding produces no waste. It only takes a little bit of energy, usually taken from body fat! It is not modified or processed, unnaturally. Breast milk is always the right temperature. There are no transportation and manufacturing costs or global impact. It’s easier to justify than the $7 pint of organic strawberries at the grocery store!
Excerpted from http://www.breastfeeding.com/reading_room/mother_nature.html and http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/mbr.htm andBreastfeeding and the Environment www.haltonbreastfeeding.com/jeankouba
So, the answer is yes, I am going to be a green mom! Now we can be all the more proud and sure when we take to the street and breast feed our children. We want to show the world that not only are we mothers making healthy choices, we are members of society doing our part to clean up this world!
-Sara @ Momzelle
Here are more post by the Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival participants! Check back because more will be added throughout the day.
, was at her husband’s softball game with her six week old son when she ran into a friend. “She didn’t even realize I was nursing while talking with her” my friend Caro was telling me the other day. There are other accessories for breastfeeding that encourage and facilitate breastfeeding in public as well; I am obviously partial to nursing shirts. I think we should do whatever it takes to get us out there, nursing in public. I believe it should be normal, although apparently it’s not as there is news everyday of women being asked to leave places because of breastfeeding. That has got to stop.
