I never thought I'd be writing about prams. Prams are not, historically, my thing.
Fashion, sustainability, the ethics of what we buy, wear and consume and the odd pair of high heels… That's my lane. But now that I have three little ones, I’ve been forced to research what they wear, use and consume, and I’ve become acutely aware that baby gear is one of the most wasteful categories in the sustainable space.
So, let’s talk about prams and Australia’s pram problem in numbers.
There are around 300,000 registered births in Australia every year. That’s around 300,000 prams, and that's before accounting for the families who buy two, three, or more when those newborns transition from one style of pram to another.
There’s the travel pram that gets thrown into the mix, maybe a lightweight buggy when the first one becomes too cumbersome, a supercharged pram for the running parents, a different configuration when the second baby arrives, and then when bub starts day care and all the mums are comparing prams, you feel compelled to update again…
That’s a lot of prams, and the average Australian child only uses a pram for two years and nine months.
And then what happens?
Prams are notoriously difficult to recycle. They’re made from a mix of plastic frames, metal joints, foam padding, and synthetic fabrics, all fused together in a way that makes them nearly impossible to pull apart and process at end of life.
Some end up on the side of the road. A few get passed around on Facebook Marketplace until they're too worn to pass on anymore, and then they end up in landfill. But, because plastic never decomposes, all the prams that have ever been shipped off to the dump, are still there, buried, leaching plastic chemicals into the soil.
Discount culture is making the problem worse. Let me ‘maths’ it for you.
The Australian pram market is dominated by two brands, Bugaboo and UPPAbaby, holding around 33% of the market together across Australia's major baby retailers.
Over 80% of the Bugaboo and UPPAbaby pram range is on promotion at any given time, with average discounts running at 20%.
The result is a market trained to buy on price, but the consequence, according to Canstar Blue, is that parents are buying cheap prams on sale.
Cheap prams, used for less than three years, end up being discarded, because they’re not a values-aligned investment. That's the cycle. Buy cheap, replace, repeat.
And somewhere in every iteration of that cycle, a pram ends up in landfill.
This is exactly the same broken model we see in fashion, and it’s not as sexy to talk about, but it has exactly the same consequences.
So what does a sustainable pram actually look like?
I researched sustainable pram options with the same lens I apply to everything I recommend: not just the aesthetics, not just the price point, but the actual materials, the supply chain, the brand's values, and whether the sustainability claims hold up under scrutiny.
And 99% of brands didn't make the cut, but Greentom did.
Greentom uses plastic bottles recovered from the ocean to make their fabrics and it’s an intentional material decision, not just a marketing ploy. The frame is made from scrap plastic that would otherwise have gone to landfill and given a second life as a piece of beautifully engineered baby equipment.
These are not small decisions. These are the kind of decisions that take a brand years to build the supply chain for, and the kind of decisions that most brands simply choose not to make because it's ‘too hard’ and ‘more expensive’ than the conventional alternative.
Greentom also holds B Corp certification (the global gold standard for businesses that are legally accountable to people and planet, not just profit) and backs their product with a lifetime warranty.
And that tiny detail isn’t so tiny. It’s the basis of my case: buy just one pram, the right pram, a sustainable pram, and spend more money for quality. Enter: the Greentom 3-in-1 Stroller.
The Greentom 3-in-1 Stroller works from the newborn stage to four years old. One pram, one purchase, from birth to the age when they're walking themselves to school and the pram gets retired for good.
Compare that to the typical multi-pram household with a newborn system, a travel option, a double set-up, the runner… Add up the cost, the packaging, the shipping, the eventual landfill, and suddenly the 'expensive' sustainable option starts looking like the most economical and the most ethical one. It's the cost-per-use calculation I ask people to apply to fashion, and it applies here too.
A $300 pram you use for less than three years and replace, is not a bargain. A considered investment in something built to last to age four, with a lifetime warranty behind it, is.
But it’s not just about the money. The quality also feels different.
The first thing I noticed about my Greentom was the weight of it. It’s not 'heavy', buy it’s solid in the way that well-made things feel. The fabric doesn’t feel cheap, because it isn’t. The folding mechanism is clean. It doesn't rattle or feel flimsy the way a lot of baby gear does. It feels like something designed by people who care about how it works and how well it lasts, not just how it looks on a shelf. Although, it does also look beautiful. White frame, grey fabric, minimal and sleek. I'm not immune to a considered design.
And yes, it’s a talking point at daycare drop off, but what made Greentom pass my test was the combination of things I couldn't find together anywhere else: genuine material transparency, verified third-party certification, a product designed for longevity rather than replacement, and a company actively solving the plastic problem rather than adding to it.
That's the difference between sustainability as a value and sustainability as a strategy.
So, if you're in the market for a pram, it's worth slowing down before you default to whatever's on sale or whatever your mother-in-law recommends.
Ask where it comes from. Ask what it's made of. Ask where it goes when you're done with it. And if you want to skip the research I did and just land on the answer, get a Greentom at greentom.com.au.
Claire x
