Sarah Ferguson Reveals Personal Mission Before Princess Beatrice's Baby Is Born

Mar. 15, 2025

Princess Beatrice and Sarah Ferguson at the tenth annual Lady Garden Foundation Langan’s Ladies Lunch fundraising for The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity on Oct. 15, 2024 in London.Photo:Dave Benett/Getty

Dave Benett/Getty

Fergie is a grandmother to Princess Beatrice and Edo’s daughterSienna, 3, and Edo’s 8-year-old sonChristopher Woolf, who is affectionately nicknamed Wolfie, from a previous relationship. The Duchess of York is also a grandmother to her younger daughterPrincess Eugenieand her husbandJack Brooksbank’s two sons,August, 3, andErnest, 1.

“As all grandmothers know, from story-time, to tea-time, to nap-time, family life is a hands-on affair – not least when it comes to changing nappies,” she continued, using British parlance for diapers.

“Over the course of my life I’ve been no stranger to it! When my first grandchild was born, I rolled up my sleeves as though a 30-year hiatus had never happened. Seeing nappy after nappy thrown into the bin, I began to wonder: what are these nappies made of and where are they going? Researching it, I was stunned: they are full of plastic waste, each one damaging our environment,” Fergie wrote.

The Duchess of York, who shares her daughters with her ex-husband,Prince Andrew, cited statistics about diapers' role in the global plastic waste crisis, acknowledging how times have changed and greater awareness has been raised since Beatrice, 36, and Eugenie, 34, were born. The Duchess said that she tried to find plastic-free diapers that were 100% compostable when she became a grandmother, “but it just wasn’t possible.”

Fergie said that this gap inspired her to launch a global campaign to eliminate plastic “nappies” with The Greater Good, and that she traveled to Samoa (whereKing CharlesandQueen Camillatoured in October for theCommonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, theirsecond stopafter Australia) to unveil the project.

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“With a new grandchild about to enter the world, and my career as a nappy-changer about to re-start, I am incredibly optimistic about the future of our planet, and this is entirely thanks to projects like this which are helping to protect the oceans for our babies to grow up and enjoy plastic-free,” she wrote in close.

The Duchess of York isn’t the only environmental advocate in the royal family — so is Princess Eugenie, who memorably had a plastic-free wedding and introducer her mother to the U.N. Special Envoy for the Oceans, Peter Thomson, as Fergie began researching the plastic diaper crisis.

King Charleshas also campaigned for conservation for decades, and seems to have passed down the passion to his sons,Prince WilliamandPrince Harry, who are driving change as founders of theEarthshot PrizeandTravalyst, respectively.

source: people.com