20 pledges for 2020: Taking baby steps in my promise to be a sustainable parent

Good news and bad in my pledge to be a more sustainable parent in 2020.

The good first. Four months now after the new kid landed I can confirm: I like her.

Still doesn’t do much, mind. Few smiles here and there; starting to grab at stuff; attempting the odd roll if the mood takes her. Which generally, it has to be said, it doesn’t. Probably it’s too early to detect a developing personality but ‘placid’ has been thrown around. If a baby can have a philosophy, hers appears to be that if you kick back long enough, someone will eventually come and change or feed you.

“You could forget she’s here,” my mother said while spending an afternoon with us for the first time in three months recently.

Bit harsh coming from nana, I thought. But also: you definitely could.

I have visions of doing a David Cameron and leaving her in some pub somewhere after lunch, arriving back hours later in a panic, the clientele all changed, the big drinkers settling in for the night, the music up, the lights down; and her, still sat there in her rocker, casting a vaguely curious eye over it all, perhaps wondering who among these new faces would be sorting out a nipple and the Sudocrem.

She is, in short, the polar opposite to the hyper-hurricane that is her two-year-old sister, a girl who considers 5am a lie in and about who a nursery assistant once declared: “Gosh, she’s really into everything” – something I’ve only recently come to realise wasn’t necessarily a compliment.

In any case, all of which is to say – without wanting to jinx things – the new one has made it easier than perhaps could have been expected to focus some energy on being sustainable.

That’s the good news. The bad news? I haven’t really focused that energy on being sustainable.

I realised this, a couple of weeks ago when, on the hottest day of the year, I stood filling up a sizeable paddling pool with a hosepipe while sipping on a beer from a case we’d had delivered especially.

This was not, clearly, a model of eco-living.

My excuse is this pandemic. In March we suddenly went from being a one child household with full nursery and grandparental support to being a two children household with neither. Clearly this was not unique, nor, in the grand scheme of things, among the most challenging circumstance people have found themselves in. Certainly, things never got so bad that our only option was to undertake a monster road trip to Durham to stay in a cottage on my parents estate.

But the sudden workload of looking after two tots all day every day, without respite, has meant the environment – trying washable nappies, travelling by public transport – has slipped down the priority list.

It turns out I’m not alone in this.

I was comforted by recent research which found a quarter of all mum and dads think it’s essentially impossible to be eco-friendly with a new-born. Some 64 per cent said sustainability is barely even a consideration in these early months.

So, what have I actually done? Installed a compost bin. Aye, I know. Not much but, on that boiling hot day – while the oldest tore into her pool and the youngest sat disinterestedly dozing in the shade – it felt like an achievement of sorts. It felt like a move in the right direction.

Because I guess being a sustainable parent is a lifetime endeavour. Just like with the little ones themselves, I’m hoping such baby steps lead to a bright future.