Plas-Tek. Plas-Tek!
September 8, 2007
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Tiffany has posted another awesome and informative article about safe bpa free sippy cups. I didn’t use sippy cups with my kids because my oldest started biting me when he nursed after exposure to a sippy cup, and the same thing happened with kid number two, and I didn’t feel like repeating the experiment with 3 and 4. LOL! Plastic has always given me the creeps and I didn’t want my babies eating on a plastic plate. Now I know why… more and more research is coming out showing the link between plastics and health problems.
If you use sippy cups, read her post to learn more about what bpa is and why it’s wise to keep it away from babies.
I read an article the other day that I feel compelled to share. Do you remember that scene in Indian in the Cupboard where the boys have taken the cowboy and indian to school with them and start fighting over them? Their teacher confronts them and Omri starts shouting: “They’re only Plas-Tek. PLAS-TEK!” to signal to them to pretend they were just toys?
That’s what this article reminded me of. We’re all turning into plastic. There’s plastic in our lungs, livers, and in our breastmilk. The sea is turning into plastic. Did you know that there is a floating mass of plastic in the ocean that is twice the size of Texas? That’s scary. It’s killing and deforming the sea creatures.
Now, I’m not a big “scare tactic” person. I prefer not to focus on all the bad stuff in the world. If I can’t fix it, it doesn’t do me any good to bring it into my conscious awareness. I don’t watch the news for this reason. I can’t do a thing about the fact that women keep throwing their babies into dumpsters or let their creepy boyfriends molest their kids. And my personal belief system is that man is not going to be able to turn this around on his own. It will take divine intervention to fix it. I believe that we’ll have a thousand years to clean up the planet, with God’s assistance, and turn it back into the paradise he gave us initially. The problem is simply too large for us to solve on our own. At the same time, I also believe that it’s my job to do what I can not to contribute to the ruining of the earth, and that those who willfully do so out of greed will be punished.
So after reading this article I’m committed to doing several things. Some of these I already do, but now I’m committed to doing them.
- Always always have a reusable bottle of water in the car so I’m not tempted to buy water in plastic containers
- Always keep my coffee travel mug with me so a run into Starbucks doesn’t mean one more plastic lid floating around
- Take the plastic bags I already have to the grocery store and when they run out, use cloth
- Using cloth menstrual products (I like my mother of eden and glad rags pads).
- Buying food in glass containers even if I have to pay more (since glass is infinitely recyclable!)
- Avoid plastic toys as much as possible and go for cardboard, wood and cloth (my kids like to make toys out of natural things too, like shells, rocks, sticks and mud, which I’m glad of). One exception would be Lego, because of their environmental stance and the fact that Lego do not lose value, which means when your kids are done with them, you can resell them on eBay for almost retail (sometimes more!) and keep them out of the landfills.
- Make my own stuff if I can’t find it in glass (like ketchup, here is a recipe)
- Making my own household cleaners instead of buying them in plastic (the detergent I buy comes in cardboard but I also want to try this recipe which is DIRT cheap)
What about you? What do you do to reduce, reuse and recycle the plastic in your life?
More Posts By Carrie:
- What’s in a toy?
- Free Natural Toy Guide - 4 Tips for Choosing Safe Toys
- Old Fashioned Toys Good For Kids, say experts
Comments
2 Responses to “Plas-Tek. Plas-Tek!”
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I don’t even know what to think anymore. I really wish I was living in the times when my dad grew up. You didn’t hear of this crap. It just makes me want to scream. How much stuff is going to come up that is bad for us. I feel like everything I do anymore I am putting my girls in harms way and it is scaring the dickens out of me.
GRRR!
Well Jen, the good news is we humans are VERY strong and can take a lot of bad stuff in our environment. Otherwise we’d all be dead by now. We’re blessed with an amazing immune system for one. But we are getting weaker. Like I said, we won’t be able to fix all this stuff on our own.