Green Options

We realize you’ve got a lot on your mind these days, like the economy, health care, and the entire Middle East, but if you have one second to take a look at this petition from the United States Breastfeeding Committee, we’d really appreciate it.

I get the sense that you probably think breastfeeding is a no-brainer. You’re smart like that. With all the health benefits for mom and baby, you’d think moms would be scrambling to attach their babies to their boobs.

And you can’t beat the price of breastmilk, particularly as our economy is sinking fast. Not that you need me to remind you of that situation. Formula is pretty darn expensive (but they don’t tell you that when they send you home with that ugly black bag and all those free samples) and the money families are spending on formula could go to helping them stay afloat during these crazy times.

So maybe you’d be surprised to know that there are still millions of new moms who head straight for the bottle (well, that one too, but mostly I’m talking about the formula bottles) without even giving breastfeeding a chance.

The question is, who’s to blame?

If you’ve been following the CPSIA as closely as I have been, then you’ll be super pleased to know that the CPSC proposed an exemption for certain natural materials from the lead testing requirements. According to a transcript excerpted at Upturned Earth:

Staff toxicologists at the product safety commission told agency commissioners in the memo that some unfinished natural materials should be considered lead free. The materials include

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While our family is on the light green side of eco living, we really do our best to have a green holiday - particularly when it comes to buying natural, handmade gifts and wrapping and decorating. But it seems as though no matter how green we try to go over the holiday season, my in-laws have the amazing ability to completely undo it with their 10 tons of wrapping paper, battery operated and electronic toys, not to be topped by the tiny little plastic gifts and bags of candy. Basically, it’s like they buy out the entire Dollar Store and stuff it in my kids’ stockings.

If you’ve often wondered why there are so darn many September and October babies in your kids’ classes, it’s because the winter, particularly the holiday season, is prime baby making time. With no reason to go outside in the miserable cold, and lots of holiday parties with some pretty potent eggnog and champagne, it seems as though parents find another way to keep themselves pleasantly occupied.

So combine a little [...]

Since we live far away from most of our close friends and family, we have to ship most of our gifts each year, which can end up being a pretty eco-unfriendly task considering the amount of wasteful shipping products out there. While we want our gifts to arrive completely unharmed, I want to make sure I’m not filling up the landfills with the three top offenders of shipping waste: styrofoam peanuts, brand new boxes, and plastic bubble wrap.

Thanks to my other gigs, I’ve got plenty of used packing materials laying around, all of which I reuse, or give to my kids for their art projects. In fact, our Christmas wrap is made entirely from brown packing paper stamped with carved potato stamps.

However, while you may not have those types of packing materials right in your closet, you probably have a few other things in there that will work well, and that won’t create more waste than necessary this holiday season.

Recently, Eco Child’s Play editor Jennifer Lance wrote about the CPSIA that will go into effect on February 20, 2009, thus decimating the thousands of handmade mom and pop run businesses in this country. Without the ability to sell their toys, hair accessories, clothing, and shoes (yes, it’s not just toys!), these families will be gravely affected - as will the many children and parents who have enjoyed these safe handmade toys and goods.

In response to the pending act, parents, small business owners, and online websites have joined together as a means to have their voices heard and encourage government officials to make changes to the act before it puts so many folks out of business.

Finally digging out of my post partum haze to report back to duty here at Eco Child’s Play, I was greeted this morning with the news that one out of three toys tested are found to have toxins. According to this NPR report, Healthy Toys, a Michigan non-profit organization, found that while toys made in China did have higher toxin levels, the ones with the made in the USA label were not guaranteed to be safe either.

When it comes to going green, kids will learn best by example. Simple efforts that your kids can see and get involved with, like changing light bulbs, refusing receipts, and recycling as much as possible, are all great ways to get kids started in the right direction.

But another way parents can encourage green habits in their kids, other than reading books, is checking out Atlanta-based idBids, a company that offers cool eco-friendly starter kits that help kids take “iddy biddy steps for a greener world.”

It’s clear that many companies are jumping on a “green bandwagon” - creating eco-friendly products not necessarily because they believe it down to their very core, but because they know it’s popular and will sell.

Not idBids.

When it seemed like other countries *cough* CANADA *cough* were leading the way in banning unsafe chemicals from toys and baby products, the US Congress finally joined the 21st Century and banned phthalates, with state bills being credited for leading the way.

As my Cool Mom Picks co-founder Liz Gumbinner stated last year, 2007 was definitely the “Year of the Recall,” as too many toys to count were taken down from shelves (well, at least they were supposed to be) due to high lead levels. But the improbable has now happened and the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act has passed “with a veto-proof majority.”

Just when you thought that we didn’t need a World Breastfeeding Awareness week, yet another mother, this time a young mom in Berea, Kentucky, is asked to leave a restaurant for breastfeeding her child. Kentucky actually has a law that forbids public interference of a breastfeeding mother, but because she was not breastfeeding when the police arrived (who threatened to charge her with criminal trespassing if [...]