Help us raise £10,000 for grassroots environmental charity Surfers against Sewage! We have 6-ish week's left to reach our ambitious target, can you help us?
Our Zodiac collection is hand-illustrated and designed with eco-friendly babies in mind. We've created the most beautiful Zodiac prints especially for babies; each print includes a delicate Zodiac constellation, and an interpretation of the individual zodiac animal.
£1 from every sale of our Zodiac collection from Feb 2022 to Feb 2023 will be donated to Surfers Against Sewage to help clean up UK waterways.
Most reusable nappy families are aware of the huge waste issue disposable nappies have created for our planet; they are single-use plastics and are filling up landfills and or being incinerated at breakneck speed. Globally, more than 300,000 disposable nappies a minute are sent to landfills, incinerated or end up in the environment, including in the ocean.
It;s also quite common knowledge that disposable nappies in landfills take up to 500 years to degrade…!
But, there are also less visible environmental impacts that we believe need more awareness.
First up, all the untreated human faeces entering landfill… Could this get any less glamorous? But really, while disposable nappy packages often tell parents to remove the faeces out of the nappies and flush down the toilet before throwing them away, many parents do not do this. Therefore, when these nappies end up in landfills, the fecal contents can leach out into groundwater, which is dangerous for the environment.
Next, the marine waste created by single-use menstrual products and wet wipes.
In Indonesia, Biologist Prigi Arisandi stood in the Surabaya River and counted "176 diapers floated in my face” in one hour. This inspired him to launch the Diaper Evacuation Brigade, a movement of volunteers who travel across Indonesia wearing hazmat suits fishing nappies out of the countries rivers.
It may look like this is just a problem in Indonesia, but this is a global problem. Single-use menstrual products, nappies (especially in public restrooms!) and wet wipes are often flushed down the toilet after use and thus, they enter the marine environment through the waste water release system, resulting in big environmental and economic impacts.
Single-use menstrual products and wet wipes are one of the most commonly found single-use plastic items in the marine environment (6.2% of waste collected on UK beaches or 5% of the floating waste in the Catalan coast, according to clean-up waste audits) and when they disintegrate they release a substantial amount of micro-plastics into the water. The negative impacts of plastic marine debris include both the impacts generated by chemical components and the visible and physical damage.
In the United Kingdom the removal of single-use menstrual products, wet wipes and other related debris from beaches is estimated to cost about €1.1 million annually, and from the aquatic surface its removal costs approximately €50,000 to the Government of the Balearic Islands each year.
There is a solution to the nappy problem our planet is facing right now, and that is reusable nappies. The issue is nicely summarised by The Nappy Alliance "with the average baby getting through 4,000 disposable nappies by the time they’re potty trained, and with disposable nappies being one of the worst sources of contamination in recycled waste, reusable nappies significantly reduce material in the waste system. The average daily plastic consumption of single-use nappies is equivalent to throwing away seven supermarket plastic bags per day".
By partnering with Surfers Against Sewage, we are donating £1 per print sold towards fighting marine waste, and helping to clean up our UK waterways.
"We're delighted to commit to fundraising for Surfers Against Sewage on our new Zodiac collection launch", says Esme, LittleLamb founder. "As a sustainable business we hold ourselves accountable to practice what we preach, so making sure we give back is something that's really important to me on both a personal and business level".
Emma Cowley, Corporate Partnerships Officer at Surfers Against Sewage added: "We're so excited to have the support from Little Lamb with their new zodiac collection. Their support will be crucial for our Water Quality work, such as our mission to #EndSewagePollution, as well as the fight against plastic pollution with our Million Mile Clean. With disposable nappies flooding our green and blue spaces, it!s amazing to have businesses like Little Lamb that are making huge waves with sustainable alternatives.”
Resources:
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/science-science-everywhere/diapers-cloth-or-disposable
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/disposable-diaper
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/20/disposable-nappies-plastic-waste-diapers
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291130/scho0808boir-e-e.pdf
https://populationmatters.org/sites/default/files/waste_in_the_uk_and_the_world.pdf
https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bffp_single_use_menstrual_products_baby_nappies_and_wet_wipes.pdf?
https://stacker.com/stories/22268/environmental-impact-disposable-diapers
