This week on Earth Beat, how to raise an eco-baby, from how you decorate baby's room to how you dress (or don't dress) baby's bottom. Then, urban farming - from sharing your backyard with a farmer, to seed bomb vending machines, to urban chickens.

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RAISING AN ECO-BABY

What's an eco baby?
Parenthood makes people go through strange transformations, suddenly becoming obsessed with doing the right thing for the baby and setting a good example. For many parents, this means going green. Earth Beat’s studio guest is Sally Hall, author of Eco Baby, A Guide To Green Parenting.

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Nappies in Poland
One dilemma facing the green parent is disposable diapers, and the enormous amount of waste they cause. Eco-minded correspondent and recent father Dave McGuire reports from Poland.
Ewa Dumanska's Polish cloth diaper website is here.

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Hear the response from Sally Hall

Chemicals in baby rooms
Nowadays every parent-to-be renovates an entire room just for the incoming baby. But a recent study shows that in doing so, many parents are exposing their vulnerable offspring to harmful levels of airborne toxins. Jan Huisman reports from an especially spiffy baby room in The Hague.

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Hear the response from Sally Hall

Diaper-less
For millions of mothers around the world, disposable diapers are an unaffordable luxury. We hear from one woman in Nairobi, Kenya who explains how she gets by without.

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Hear the response from Sally Hall

URBAN FARMING

Backyard vegetable patch
We’ve featured so many stories about urban agriculture recently that we’re in danger of turning into a farming programme – but we still couldn’t resist this: a company in Ottawa, Canada called Vegetable Patch covering new ground when it comes to local city grown food… by digging up people’s own backyards. Darrell Harvey reports.

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Seed bomb vending machine
If you don’t have any land to lend to urban farmers, don’t worry you’re not excluded from the urban farming movement. All you need is the change for a vending machine, a seed bomb vending machine, that is. We spoke to Daniel Phillips, one half of the Common Studio team who’s behind the idea.
Click here to support Greenaid's Change for change, seedbombing for greener cities movement.

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Envirominute
Now, could you spot the difference between organic and non organic seeds? Fiona Campbell discovers some discerning diners who can, in this 60 second roundup.

Listen to the envirominute

Urban chickens
What what’s an urban farm with some urban chickens in it? A British company – called Omlet – is reinventing the chicken as a relatively commitment-free city pet, with the added bonus of fresh eggs! To learn about the do’s and don’ts of keeping hens in the city garden, correspondent Allis Moss attended a special hen party in Croydon, South London.

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NEXT WEEK ON EARTH BEAT

Next week on Earth Beat, we bring you meaty mysteries: Who’d eat a lab-grown steak ? What’s a Vegetarian Butcher? And what could possibly bring a person to eat duckweed?
As I understand it, people who have tasted the duckweed are very enthusiastic about the taste. It tastes like fresh grass, and we all know how deliriously happy cows are when in spring they get outside for the first time…”
That’s in the next edition of Earth Beat from Radio Netherlands Worldwide.