Smart Cookie: Stacey Ring, Founder of Little Eco Baby Nappy Service

1) Could you tell us a little about yourself and what’s your business about?
My name is Stacey and our company is all about reducing the negative impacts of disposable nappies. Our business has two branches, retail and nappy service. Our nappy service is based on the NSW South
Coast and is designed to make cloth nappies accessible to time poor parents and our retail shop offers
high quality modern cloth nappies and accessories for parents who choose to save money and wash
themselves.

2) Why did you choose to go sustainable and eco-friendly?
Well, we had always been environmentally conscious and together my husband and I became more and
more focused on sustainability. It all really started though, when my good friend Kim shared her
knowledge of the dangerous toxins in our lifestyle. (She is mentored by the amazing Therese Kerr who is
the clean living queen!) I had lost loved ones to cancer and experienced some trouble initially falling
pregnant, then I’d gone on to have an unjustified premature birth of my daughter at 30 weeks. Kim
inspired me to make positive changes to our lifestyle for the health and wellbeing of my family.

3) What eco friendly benefits does a subscription service have?
Heaps! We are proud to have prevented over 110,000 nappies from landfill to date. That’s one tick.
Second tick is our laundry. Washing cloth nappies obviously uses water and energy however our nappy
service laundry is 100% solar powered and negates any energy consumption! Disposable nappies actually use more water in production than washing reusable nappies over their lifetime. For parents motivated to lessen their carbon footprint using our nappy service is a great way to do it! Third tick is that we also only wash with environmentally friendly detergents which protects the waterways and our precious Little Eco Babies.

4) What makes cloth nappies so much better?
As mentioned previously, they are more environmentally friendly. A child in disposables will generate almost 900kg of nappy waste during it’s first two years. All of which is dumped in landfill waiting for up to 500 years to break down, whilst contributing huge amounts of carbon emissions. In Australia nappy
manufacturers do not have to disclose all their ingredients, and it’s confronting as a parent to learn that
disposables really do contain toxic chemicals, such as dioxins, sodium polycarbonate, tributyltin and
phthalates. These are all linked to health conditions, with some even being known carcinogens!

An example is the familiar gel like crystals you sometimes see break apart in a disposable nappy, these are made from sodium polycarbonate which is an ultra absorbent compound. This chemical was actually
removed from tampons due to toxic shock syndrome concerns, but it’s still allowed in our babies’
nappies! Put simply, by using cloth nappies you can protect a baby from this kind of exposure, protect
their health and their future.

5) Why did you decide to implement a nappy hire and laundry service with your business?
Well we were using cloth nappies on our son and absolutely loving them, but we wondered why all our
friends weren’t at least giving them a try. They had started to comment, and say that they would’ve loved
to use cloth as well but they were just too tired and too busy to even comprehend it. We could relate, and
it got us thinking… We would create a service that could offer fully assembled modern cloth nappies,
delivered to time poor parents. We would take away all the hard work and support parents to make
sustainable and healthy choices for their family. Today our goals are much bigger, the nappy service has grown and we have just launched our first collection of modern cloth nappies and wet bags, available to
purchase for parents to wash themselves! We are proud to be inspiring change in parents across the
world to make cloth mainstream again.

6) What’s your next goal?
Our next goal is to increase our manufacturing. This first collection is limited as we were testing the water and literally learning on the run. Already we have gained a lot of confidence and are aiming to grow our collection so we can share our amazing products with more parents! Our other goal is to expand our nappy service.

Currently we only service the Illawarra/South Coast area and we would love to be able to offer the service Australia wide. Lifestyles are busy and parents are becoming increasingly motivated to lessen their dependence on plastics and reduce their carbon footprint. Little Eco Baby Nappy Service is a
great way to facilitate this.

7) Any piece of advice for someone that wants to start a business but is not sure about it?
Test your concept out with something like Survey Monkey to see what consumers think. Crunch your
numbers by underestimating your profit and overestimating your loss to see if the business is even
financially viable. If it’s a side hustle, plan to keep your current job and work hard in your spare time, this will take some unwanted financial pressure off and give your new concept the best opportunity to thrive.
Starting a business is hard work, but it’s also really rewarding.