Green Options

Mattel. The name is no longer only synonymous with Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Polly Pocket. Now when you hear “Mattel”, it’s flashback time: to lead-laden, choketastic toys.

When the Consumer Products Safety Commission was charged with implementing the new CPSIA, designed to make toys safer, fans of handcrafted goods worried: would we still be able to get our beloved natural toys? After all, toy testing for lead and phthalates has a price tag attached that is harder on the small business owner than it is on corporate giants like Mattel.

Turns out, it’s especially easy for Mattel, as the toy manufacturer gets to use “independent” in-house testing instead of submitting its toys to third-party testing like everyone else, as the AP reports,

The Consumer Product Safety Commission recently, and quietly, granted Mattel’s request to use its own labs for testing.

Although I’d love to not be too cynical on this, guess what? Coincidentally, Mattel spent $1 million last year in lobbying costs.

Waaaaaaaay back in December, you might remember I wrote my representatives a letter about the CPSIA of 2008. As a small crafter of children’s items and a consumer of handmade goods for myself and my children, I was extremely worried about the stringent testing requirements called for in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. Specifically, I envisioned a future in which only a few huge manufacturers (the same ones, perhaps, whose outsourcing caused the lead scandals in the first place?) could afford to put children’s items on the market, and in which thrift stores and libraries were cleared out of children’s items entirely. Considering I only buy handmade or second-hand, that’s a problem for me.

The dust has settled down for just a little while, but you might remember that I did my best to do my part by writing letters to my representatives protesting the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). Senator Lugar replied quite a while ago, and I haven’t heard a peep out of Senator Bayh, but at long last, I have received my reply from Representative Baron Hill. Here it is:

February 25, 2009 

Dear Mrs. Finn, [I specifically signed my name as “Ms.”–harumph)

In watching this green news update from ZapRoot, I noticed they referenced our blog post entitled “my letter to my representatives protesting the consumer product safety improvement act”.

This is an important topic, and we are happy to see it in the news. One of the important points the ZapRoot news flash points out is that this act will create more terrible landfill waste, because places like the goodwill, and thrift stores, will not be able to sell their “untested” products. Handmade items are often created with reclaimed or recycled materials and have become creative ways too lesson the burden of landfill waste on our planet.  Hopefully once more of us tune into the issue, we will stop this extremist consumer protectionism.

Here’s my letter to Senator Richard G. Lugar, Senator Evan Bayh, and Representative Baron P. Hill about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008:

Dear Senator Lugar (I wrote each member individually, but Senator Lugar went first),

I’m a stay-at-home mom of two little girls, and in my free time I make hand-crafted toys  out of recycled and/or natural materials. I sell my work at craft fairs and online—my girls are able to be with me, playing happily, and the small amount of money I earn is one of the things that enables me to stay home with them.