You want the world to be a better place for your little one. But you also know the climate crisis isn’t only going to affect your kid in the future: it’s happening already. Every household has an environmental impact, and when there’s a newborn or toddler in the house, it often means using more disposable products like nappies, nappy bags, and wipes. Since your baby will go through about 6,000 nappies in the first few years of their life, we took the opportunity to make our products as eco-conscious as we can. Read on to learn what biodegradable, compostable, and sustainable mean to us – we’ll keep the gobbledegook to a minimum.

What does biodegradable mean?

Biodegradable material is something that can break down and decay without harming the environment. 

And how about compostable – what’s that?

Compostable material is also something that can break down on its own, but the difference compared to biodegradable is that it needs specific conditions to do it. Things that are ‘home compostable’ can be processed in your compost bin, and turned into food for your soil.

However, not everything that’s compostable can be composted at home. It might need to go to a commercial or industrial composting facility. They have a carefully maintained temperature and humidity, to make sure the thing being composted can break down properly. Like biodegradable materials, compostable materials need to fully break down in the right way for them to be environmentally helpful.

What makes tooshies sustainable?

There’s no single or simple definition of what makes something sustainable. Pretty much everything requires resources (like water, energy, or fuel) to be created or continue existing. In the simplest sense, sustainability can refer to using as few resources as possible to create, maintain, and dispose of something.

We prioritise using materials that have a track record of being regenerative and minimally environmentally impactful. We favour bamboo and other plant-based fibres, to help limit our use of traditional plastics.

As a business, one of the best things we can do to become more sustainable is to continue learning and improving. That’s because sustainability isn’t a fixed, easy-to-understand thing. It’s a complex, moving target. The more we all know about it, the more ways we’ll discover to become truly sustainable.

Your tooshies cheat sheet

Now that you know the differences between biodegradable and compostable (and what sustainability means to us), you can confidently pick environmentally-thoughtful products for your little one. It’s just one way to help create a better world for them to grow up in.