That time of year has come again: school supply shopping. My daughter and I had plenty of company doing our back to school shopping this afternoon. It seemed as if everyone in my city had descended on Staples!
So there we were along with dozens of others picking out markers, pencils, glue and folders and I found myself wondering: Are these products safe? And how would I know?
A little research confirmed my suspicions that back-to-school supplies–like many consumer goods–are chock full of industrial compounds. Products like markers, crayons, notebooks and lunchboxes contain chemicals that have been associated with a range of diseases including allergies, asthma, cancer and behavioral disorders.
Chemical reform legislation that is making its way through Congress will hopefully change this, and put the burden on industry to prove that chemicals are safe before they go to market, as well as pull those suspected or known to be hazardous.
But in the meantime, I return to my original question: how are we to know which markers, notebooks, and lunchboxes are safe?
Fortunately, there are some great resources we can turn to for help answering this question:
The Environmental Working Group has put together a series of Healthy Home Tips to help families choose safe, non-toxic products. Their Back to School Guide offers great tips for how to keep toxins out of your kids’ schools supplies.
The Center for Health, Environment and Justice has also created a guide focused on avoiding PVC. PVC is one of the most toxic plastics and yet is found in a wide variety of consumer goods, including those designed for children. Examples include backpacks, lunchboxes, and three ring binder. You can download CHEJ’s guide by clicking here and find out more about PVC by clicking here.
But what about school lunches? Plastics, pesticides, additives in processed food–these can also expose our kids to unhealthy chemicals. Fortunately, Healthy Child, Healthy World has created a handy pocket guide to help you make safer food & food storage choices.
Happy & healthy shopping!
Post updated August 28, 2011
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If you’re like me you’ve become MUCH better at reducing your household waste over the past couple of years. No more do you throw unwashed yogurt cartons in the trash because you can’t bother to rinse them out. No more do you ask to have your groceries bagged in plastic. No more do you buy single serving disposable water bottles. You bring your own reusable bags and water bottles, and you religiously wash out and recycle every containers that your municipal recycler accepts. Well… maybe you aren’t so “religious” about it. But you’re doing much better, right?
Of course we all have our moments of weakness. Such as when we are–I mean, I am–tempted to get my coffee in a disposable hot cup when I’ve forgotten my reusable mug. Or when we–OK I–am tempted to throw away a plastic bag rather than bring it to the plastic bag recycling station at my local grocery store. Or when I am tempted to throw away an old toy rather than give it away.
I don’t know about you, but it helps me to overcome and avoid these moments when I know what the impact of my actions are. Here are some factoids that I have found especially motivating:
- On average we all throw away seven and a half times our body weight each year.
- The average household throws away 5 kg of organic (i.e., compostable) waste each week.
- The average household throws 6 trees worth of paper in their trash each year.
These factoids come courtesy of Recycle.co.uk. Similar to the Freecycle Network, but only for the UK, Recycle.co.uk is a cyberspace swapshop where registered users give and get stuff from each other for free–keeping things out of the landfill and reducing consumption. Recycle.co.uk has created a nifty “infographic” that powerfully illustrates the negative impacts of excessive wastefulness on the one hand, and the positive impacts of the 3rs on the other.
Check it out. You may find it helps you overcome your next moment of weakness!
Infographic by Recycle – Don’t bin it, recycle it
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Remember Cash for Clunkers? The federal program that paid people money to trade in their old, gas guzzlers for newer, more efficient, less polluting ones? Our representatives in Congress having been working on creating a version of this program for homeowners. Cash for Caulkers, otherwise known as the Home Star Energy Retrofit Act of 2010 has passed the House of Representatives with a lot of great provisions for homeowners looking to save energy and money.
In the House version of the bill, rebates are available for everything from insulation and air sealing work, to window replacement, to furnace and boiler upgrades. Houston Neal, of Software Advice, has written a clear and comprehensive guide to the bill–itemizing the 13 retrofits of the bill, along with the requirements and rebate amount for each. There’s another great piece about the bill, including the political backstory over at Grist.
I’m not sure what’s happening with the Senate version. News reports from last week indicated that Senator Reid has incorporated Cash for Caulkers into the much pared down energy bill that has taken shape in the wake of the collapse of comprehensive climate legislation.
Home Star would be a very good thing; if and when the Senate bill passes, it will be financially feasible for many more of us to retrofit our homes. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we should give up on comprehensive climate legislation. We can and should let our congressional leaders know that they have let us down, and that they must try again. You can get some ideas about how to do this at 1Sky.org and at The Union of Concerned Scientists website. If Home Star passes, we’ll be able to continue to fight for this from homes that use energy much more efficiently.
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The Center for Health, Environment and Justice has also created a guide focused on avoiding PVC. PVC is one of the most toxic plastics and yet is found in a wide variety of consumer goods, including those designed for children. Examples include backpacks, lunchboxes, and three ring binder. You can download CHEJ’s guide by clicking here and find out more about PVC by clicking here.
But what about school lunches? Plastics, pesticides, additives in processed food–these can also expose our kids to unhealthy chemicals. Fortunately, Healthy Child, Healthy World has created a handy pocket guide to help you make safer food & food storage choices.
I thought that you might be interested in this link from Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. It lists information about some school supplies, including paint.
http://www.saferchemicals.org/resources/chemicals/heavy_metal.html
Comment by Katherine Friedrich — February 1, 2011 @ 10:43 am