How We Can Do More For Sustainability By Reducing Waste From Baby Gear

Babies need so much stuff. But what do you do with it all when they outgrow everything? Throwing items away just means they will wind up in a landfill somewhere.

Here at PramWash and PramShare, we always encourage the practice of reusing strollers and sharing strollers. We are passionate about sustainability and the 3Rs – reduce, reuse and recycle.

When we clean a stroller, we give it an opportunity to be used again. There is less need to purchase a new stroller when you can reuse a pre-existing one. This is where PramWash advocates the practice of cleaning your strollers. With PramWash’s expertise in providing specialist cleaning for your used baby equipment, cleaning and maintaining your baby equipment ensures that you can pass it on in pristine condition as much as possible.

When a stroller is old and no longer of use, we can always recycle its components, without the stroller winding up in a landfill. It is very easy to recycle the plastics, metals and fabrics. You can dismantle or take apart a stroller and recycle the plastic, metal and fabric components separately. In turn, materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash are turned into new products. Otherwise, if you find it a hassle to dismantle it yourself, you may drop off at PramShare’s stroller and child car seat donation box.

If you are environmentally conscious, you may choose to rent a stroller to reduce the need to dispose a product after its use. Renting items is cheaper than buying them, and by reusing an item among several people, we encourage sustainability by reducing the resources needed to produce more items. If a product can be reused and shared many times along its lifespan, why should we spend more money and resources to create more variations of it?

This is especially true when your child grows out of the stroller or car seat when he or she reaches a certain age. Passing down to others or renting out your baby gear is an example of reducing waste. This is where PramShare comes in. You can choose long-term rental where you only pay a monthly subscription of S$41.65 to enjoy up to 5 exchanges of different stroller models in a year.  We also ensure that the baby gear up for rental is delivered to the customer after being properly sanitized from the last use.

In most cases, though, avoid giving your old car seat as a hand-me-down. Typically, used car seats aren't as safe as those that are brand-new.

If it is not visibly damaged, has not been in a crash, has not been recalled, has not expired, or has not been cleaned with harsh chemicals and you are giving it to a close friend, there may be exceptions, but in general we do not really know the history of a seat. We would encourage parents not to reuse the seat or give it as a hand-me-down unless they are confident about its history. But rather, to donate the used child car seats and strollers to PramShare for recycling. PramShare dismantles and segregates the baby gears into different materials to be sent to authorized recyclers of different expertise to ensure the waste is remanufactured for good use.

At PramShare and PramWash, we will continue to work tirelessly towards the objective and ensure any business decision we make has the long-term perspective to reduce wastage, to decrease reliance on natural resources, for a more sustainable future. 

With that, do check out our previous article on Sustainability, Doing Our Part To Contribute To A Sustainable Future - PramWash & PramShare.

If you could do more for the planet, what would you do first?