Switch to natural baby wipes
Why This is Green
It’s shocking that something specifically designed to be wiped all over a baby’s thin and vulnerable skin can contain unsafe chemicals. And yet so many baby wipes do. Conventional wipes can contain many chemicals of concern, including the preservatives iodopropynyl butylcarbamate, a known neurotoxin, and methylisothiazolinone, which is banned from Canadian cosmetics but not American baby wipes. Go figure. And there’s more! Wipes can also contain hormone disrupting fragrance and parabens as well as DMDM hydantoin, a preservative that has trace amounts of formaldehyde.
And then there’s the wipe itself: it could be made of non-renewable polyester or perhaps cotton. Unless that cotton is organic, it’s grown with significant pesticides and fertilizers, and is usually bleached with chlorine before making its way to your baby’s diaper change.
Thankfully parents have options. The safest and most eco-friendly choice is a reusable cloth. For when that isn’t practical, there are disposable wipes made without the chemicals and ingredients listed above, and some are even made from certified organic cotton.
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How To
Set yourself up to use reusable wipes at home.
For on the go, buy the baby- and eco-friendliest natural disposable wipes you can find.
One small caveat: biodegradable, flushable wipes seem as green as it gets—far better than sending them to a landfill. But a Consumer Reports test evaluating three flushable wipes revealed none of them had broken down after 30 minutes (by comparison, toilet paper breaks down in 8 seconds); they suggest throwing them in the trash.
