How to have a green baby

Feeding older babies and toddlers
As your child gets older, feed him or her healthy food and drink. Use filtered tap water or bottled water for drinking. Try to prepare fresh, organic foods. There is a growing number of brands of prepared organic baby food. Heinz also makes a range of organic baby-food products in addition to its conventional range.

Fresh organic is also becoming more readily available. Many of the large supermarket chains now stock a range of organic produce, pasta and other wheat products.

Recycling rules apply to those tiny jars, bottles and food tins. Rinse them in old washing water and put them in your recycling bin. As with all food preparation, fruit and vegetable scraps can also be composted.

Baby-food jars are great for reusing around the home. They're particularly good for storing small bits and pieces, like spare buttons, paper clips and hairpins. If you're stewing food for a baby, why not use a double boiler and use the steam to sterilize the containers in the top half while the food is cooking?

Doing the laundry
It's amazing how one tiny little person can produce the same amount of dirty laundry as four adults. This then escalates when solid food is introduced -- the adult usually ends up wearing more food than the infant actually eats.

Wash with pure soap flakes or a laundry powder that has a low environmental impact and is phosphate-free. Low-environmental-impact products with no phosphates, optical brighteners or petrochemicals tend to be kinder to the sensitive skin of babies and provoke fewer allergic reactions.

If you're worried about the sanitation of clothing, washing in water heated to 65-95 C will kill most of the bugs. Also, sunlight has a sanitizing and bleaching effect, so if the water is warm, sun-dry your laundry. If you really feel that you must use a diaper soak, again use one without phosphates, and use non-chlorine bleach.

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Excerpted from Greeniology: How to Live Well, Be Green and Make a Difference by Tanya Ha. Copyright 2005 by Tanya Ha. Excerpted with permission by Penguin. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced without permission in writing from the publisher.