Rent a Pushchair Scheme

An environment minister, has suggested that families should share prams and other nursery equipment in an attempt to save the environment. Dan Rogerson, has been suggested that parents rent or even share, a pushchair or pram. The hope would be to stop people throwing away expensive products when they are still useable.

The scheme called the ‘Rebus project’ means parents: “are not actually buying a product. You are buying the use of that service, so it is not the actual bit of metal and plastic that you are buying. If that item meets your needs that is fine but if not then it goes back and you replace it with something else.”

Thus a family would hire a pram or pushchair and then return it for refurbishment if and when it becomes damaged, or reaches the end of its life with their family.

This scheme is to encourage households to throw away less waste, and to facilitate families to repair and recycle useful goods.
A search engine will enable householders to search for their local repair and reuse services.

We, at Best Buggy would always encourage recycling a pushchair if it was still fit for use. We often buy and sell second hand pushchairs. With double pushchairs in particular, we prefer to consider buying a more expensive brand of second hand pushchair, rather than a cheaper brand tandem new. Many pushchairs these days can have new fabrics packs or hoods added or swapped for a new baby. New mattresses are easily bought, and Bugaboo in particular choose to have a carrycot fabric which can be easily washed for a new baby, rather than a hard sided carrycot.

However, parents currently have a choice, and we hope that the choice remains. Whilst some second hand pushchairs can literally be ‘as new’, we have also seen some horrific second hand pushchairs in the past, and we are definitely choosy about what we put our children in.

It is worth bearing in mind that there are strict safety rules on selling second hand pushchairs:
“All prams and pushchairs, both new and used, must be safe. One way to ensure this is by compliance with BS EN 1888:2012. Prams and pushchairs are defined as: ‘any wheeled vehicle designed for the transport of one or more infants either seated or reclined’. Supplying an unsafe product is a contravention of the General Product Safety Regulations 2005.”

Thus, maybe these recycled pushchairs could give parents peace of mind about the safety of the pushchair, when buying second hand.