Green Your Baby Shower

With celebrity pregnancies getting so much attention lately, my mind has turned to baby showers.

Baby registries are big business, and the celebrations often center around light-hearted disposability. However, going green doesn’t have to take the fun out of baby showers. Here are some tips for making more eco-conscious decisions. Choose a few or try them all.

Go Electronic.

This is easier to do than ever. Whether you use Evite, Pingg or design your own PDF, send the invitations via email. People get it right away, they’re likely to respond faster and most online services automatically track RSVPs. Oh yeah, and you’re saving trees. Make sure to include on the invitation a line that sets the tone for your green shower, such as: “Join us for an earth-friendly baby celebration.”

Paper gets a dose of green with seeded paper invitations (and thank-you cards) that guests can plant as wildflowers afterwards.

Shower Activity Idea: Make this a shower activity by asking the guests to bring their invitations with them. Together, the group can plant a wildflower garden in honor of your baby. Having a garden (or tree or other plant) in your yard from that day leaves a lasting impression for you and your child.

Decorate Simply.

A baby shower lasts just a few hours. Do you really want to spend another hour or two hanging (and cleaning up) streamers and balloons? Decorate simply with nature. Use the season for inspiration. In good weather, have the shower outdoors in a garden or park with natural landscaping as the automatic décor. Inside, gather round a cozy fireplace or create ambiance with soy candles. Consider decorating with items that serve double duty such as potted plants that guests can take home as favors or edible fruit arrangements that “wow” as both centerpieces and food for the guests.

Use “green” as a theme: serve green-colored smoothies and locally-grown foods. Hang a clothesline adorned with secondhand clothes for baby. Make the traditional diaper cake with cloth diapers.

This is the time to use the good china. Scour secondhand stores for a variety of fabrics to use as pretty cloth napkins and tablecloths. Add colorful dishes and glassware to spruce up the table. If you refuse to wash dishes, a number of places now offer eco-friendly (and good-looking) tableware including GreenPartyGoods and Green Planet Parties.

Shower Activity Idea: Have guests paint pieces of colorful fabric with their wishes for you and baby. The fabric pieces become cloth napkins for the shower and a keepsake for you.

Alternatively, purchase organic onesies or T-shirts for baby that guests can paint (using non-toxic dyes) with pictures or fun slogans.

Ask for Gently Used, Recycled Gifts.

Used items for a new baby? Horror of horrors! Or so some people think. But really, the baby doesn’t care, and when it comes down to it, you won’t either. You’ll care more about getting a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

When I was pregnant, I ‘ooh’-ed and ‘ah’-ed in the aisles of Babies ‘R Us. I spontaneously bought items, such as the super soft, white fleece blanket adorned with cute giraffes. But what it comes down to is this: That brand new, fleece blanket with cute giraffes gets just as poo-stained as the hand-me-down from Aunt Eulalie.

Yard sales, secondhand stores, craigslist and friends’ garages are loaded with baby gear from strollers and high chairs to swings and toys. Since babies don’t use them very long, most of these items are in great condition. For safety reasons, there are a few things you should get new, such as a car seat and a breast pump. But beyond that, you can keep stuff out of landfills by shopping used.

You’re not being “cheap.” You’re being conscious while getting something you need. That something will likely be unique too, because you didn’t get the latest stroller from Target that everyone else has.

You can register online with wishlist.com where you can compile gifts from a variety of sites and stores and specify that you want the BPA-free bottles or the chlorine-free disposable diapers.

Shower Activity Idea: Ask guests to bring their favorite book from childhood (whether a used or new copy) as a gift for baby. This will kickstart your child’s library and last longer than most toys. Make a game of guessing who brought which book. Why is it their favorite? What memories do they recall?

Request Reusable, Creative Gift Wrap.

This doesn’t have to mean every gift is wrapped in newspaper. The wrapping can actually be part of the actual gift, such as an organic blanket or baby sling. Natural baskets can hold any number or shape of gift and can be reused as baby storage. Crafty friends might like to sew a diaper bag or tote.

Shower Activity Idea: Make it a contest and award a prize to the guest with the most creative, reusable gift wrap.

Give Something Green to the Guests.

Make it something the guests can actually use instead of a plastic momento that quickly finds its way into the trash. Some ideas? A potted plant, handmade soaps, organic chocolate truffles or herbs in a box. Or have someone (husband, mother, friend) take a photo of you with each guest when they arrive. That person can print the photos out and insert into pre-bought recycled frames to give to each guest before they leave.

Shower Activity Idea: Acquire baby photos of each guest (or search for celebrity baby photos online) and hang these up in a display. Make a guessing game of who’s who.

If you liked this, check out my post on the Blessingway—an alternative celebration to the typical baby shower. I had one myself, and it was more memorable and intimate than any baby shower I’ve ever been to.

This post is featured at Babies and Beyond, Simply Natural Saturdays, Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways, Small Footprint Friday, Tuesday Greens, Thank Your Body Thursday and Party Wave Wednesday.