Abu Dhabi: Every day we eat, drink and breathe minerals and trace elements, never giving a thought to what moves from the environment and into our bodies.
For that reason, the Abu Dhabi Corniche Hospital started an initiative across UAE hospitals, to help encourage mothers to use eco-friendly material for their newborn babies.
In celebration of yesterday's Earth Day 2010, the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA), managed by Johns Hopkins Medicine International, launched an eco-friendly campaign, in the 235-bed hospital.
As part of their campaign, eco-friendly suppliers spent the day speaking with mothers regarding the cutting down on unnecessary waste, and fusing on eco-friendly cloth nappies, instead of disposable nappies.
According to research conducted by the University of Liverpool, choosing alternative disposable nappies helps you go green because you may be able to compost them, keeping them out of landfills.
Such nappies often contain fewer chemicals than traditional disposables, keeping toxins out of the environment and away from a baby's skin. Some alternative disposables are made from sustainable resources.
More than 100 Green Baby eco-friendly T-shirts were given to newborn babies, while vendors from organic supermarkets were displaying organic baby food among other eco-friendly products.
Organic baby food products for newborns and infants come in a wide range of baby formulas supplemented with DHA and ARA, available in dairy and soy, cereals that are easy and gentle on a baby's system, jars of food blends pureed and specially designed for a baby starting to eat solid foods, juices and even teething biscuits.
Vision
As part of the staff members' pledge to help preserve the hospital's natural resources, a campaign to avoid printing unless the material was very important was launched.
"Focusing on newly born babies will help us create an eco-friendly environment that will encourage mothers to use alternative eco-friendly products and baby food, which is part of the hospital's 2010 to 2011 eco-friendly vision," Karthick Prasanna, Senior Operations Manager at Corniche Hospital, and the leader of the green hospital initiative, told Gulf News.
