A Parent's Complete Guide to Earth Month and Beyond

Happy Earth Month! From our passionate advocacy work to our sustainable material sourcing and unwavering commitment to organic integrity, Naturepedic is all in for a greener world. And guess what? We're just getting started! 

To celebrate Earth Month 2024, we've put together this sustainable living guide to help families like yours create eco-friendly homes and live healthier – not just Earth month, but every month.

Earth Month isn’t just a holiday for climate activists or scientists – it’s a collective celebration for all of us! In fact, Earth Day itself is the largest civic holiday, celebrated by over one billion people each year. 

Throughout the month of April, we pay homage to the place that all of us call home. And, it’s one of the most popular times to advocate for taking care of and protecting our Mother Earth.

Although every day is a good day to take care of the planet, Earth Month sheds light on some of the best ways to do so. By delving into sustainable living practices and embracing greener lifestyles, we can celebrate the Earth and actively protect its beauty each and every day.

Talking about the environment with your little ones doesn’t have to be a scary conversation. Better yet, it shouldn’t be! 

Ensuring that you take an inspiring and motivating approach to the conversation will help your children to better understand complicated topics like the environment (which is a great skill to work on at a young age!). 

Discussing sustainability with your kiddos is an important part of fostering those eco-friendly habits while they’re young. Try to keep these helpful tips in mind:

• Lead by example, go green yourself!
• Open the conversation about the environment by reading a bedtime story
• Focus on solutions (changes you and your family can make together)

Sustainable living doesn’t have to be all or nothing. After all, changing your daily habits all at once can be overwhelming. There are many manageable ways to start incorporating better habits into your lifestyle. Here are a few!

Start by paying attention to ingredient labels on the foods you eat, cleaning products you use and items that you buy for your home. Relying on trusted certifications like EWG VERIFIED®, GOTS and MADE SAFE® can help you feel more confident about the ingredients in the products you buy (and can protect you from greenwashing!). 

Organic and non-toxic products are safer for your home, healthier for your family and better for the planet. Because these products avoid using harmful chemicals and questionable materials, they won’t leach toxic chemicals into the environment if they inevitably end up in a landfill.

We know that single-use plastics are convenient, but they negatively impact both human health and that of the environment. For starters, many of these plastics contain endocrine disruptors, which can result in health issues like: 

• Cancer
• Reproductive problems
• Auto-immune disorders

Plus, it takes one single plastic bag approximately 1,000 years to degrade in a landfill. And it may never fully break down, polluting soil, water, air and even into the foods we eat with microplastics. 

By switching to reusable water bottles and containers – a measurable, manageable task – you can reduce your solid plastic waste by up to 86%!

From the paint that goes on your walls to the materials in your flooring, there are lots of places for toxic chemicals to hide in your home. Moreover, these hidden chemicals pose environmental risks that harm our soil, water and air. Here are two major categories to be aware of.

VOCs – volatile organic compounds – are gasses that are released from certain solids or liquids. Often found in commonly used items around the home, VOCs can cause a range of harmful health effects from headaches to dizziness to central nervous system damage and more. 

You can avoid exposure to VOCs in your home by avoiding products with: 

• Formaldehyde
• Flame retardant chemicals
• Common waterproofing materials such as vinyl

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, can hide within our flooring, cookware, cleaning products and even our sleep spaces. Also dubbed “forever chemicals,” PFAS can also cause a wide range of serious health effects, including heightened cholesterol levels, hormone disruption and an increased risk of certain cancers. 

To learn more about avoiding PFAS in your home, check out this blog. 

One of the best places to start adopting sustainable living practices is your bedroom. After all, humans spend approximately a third of our lives asleep! The best place to start green-ifying your bedroom is your mattress. 

Naturepedic’s certified organic mattresses and bedding are handcrafted with sustainably sourced materials like organic cotton, wool and latex. But more importantly, they’re made without toxic chemicals and questionable materials that can harm your health and the planet – because you’re both irreplaceable. 

Earth Month is a celebration of our collective home and one of the best times to learn about sustainable living. Although Earth Day is just one day, it’s the perfect time to build better habits that help protect the environment, better your health and help preserve our beautiful Earth for the next generation. 

Here at Naturepedic, we uphold our pledge to protect our planet through the materials we use, the products we create and the business practices that we implement – not just Earth Day, but every day. Learn more about how we practice sustainability.