Ecominded Mama

Organic make-up

I got a copy of Scholastic's Parent & Child magazine from my daughter's preschool this week, and the short article "Saving Face" has some good information about organic make-up. I don't buy much make-up, but I'll keep the article's simple tips in mind the next time I buy some.

One of the most interesting facts in the article is that cosmetic companies are not required to safety-test or fully list ingredients. I'm cursed with sensitive skin that reacts differently to products with seemingly similar ingredients -- now I know that I could be reacting to an ingredient that isn't even listed. Frustrating!

Klean Kanteen water bottles

The Klean Kanteen bottles I bought for the girls are a hit -- they love to drink out of them (I'm not sure why, exactly, but they do). My only complaint is that the ones I bought have the sports top, and it leaks if the girls turn it upside down and definitely if they shake it upside down if the cover is off (it doesn't leak when the cover is on, though).  If I come across some in my travels, I'm going to buy the nipple/sippy adapter caps -- I'm not quite ready to order them yet because we primarily use the bottles for water and a little spilled water doesn't bother me. If I decide to make the switch and get rid of all of our plastic sippy cups, though, I'll stock up on the adapter caps. 

I was curious about one thing, though: the plastic cap. Isn't it unsafe to have the girls suck on plastic? I checked the Klean Kanteen site, and they have a pretty reasonable answer (a steel cap might crack or break teeth if they got bumped by the cap) and a decent solution (you can buy a steel cap on their website). 

What's in an egg?

I haven't written about food much here, but it definitely figures into my environmental aspirations. We eat organic food whenever we can, and we also are huge fans of our local farmers market and the individual vendors that grow and sell fruits and vegetables and livestock in our general area. In an ideal world all of our food would come from our own garden or from the farms and gardens of our neighbors, but we don't even have a garden and neither do our immediate neighbors, so our local farmers market -- supplemented by our local grocery store -- has to suffice. 

One item we try to buy at the farmers market but often arrive too late to get are eggs (there's a lot of competition for them in our town!). So we buy them from the grocery store, and although the ones we typically buy aren't labeled organic, they claim to be from vegetarian-fed chickens that were not given artificial hormones or antibiotics. Some others claim to be "natural," "all-natural," "cage-free," and "naturally raised." Huh?!? Thankfully, I saw yesterday's NY Times article Sorting Through the Claims of the Boastful Egg that explains what all those similar-sounding terms mean.  

More news today about BPA

I admit that I'm not comforted by the statement, but Laura Tarantino, a senior Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientist, said today that "A margin of safety exists that is adequate to protect consumers, including infants andchildren, at the current levels of exposure (to BPA)." I'm not comforted because the rest of the article where that quote appears (published on Yahoo! but written by two Associated Press writers) provides strong evidence that BPA (bisphenol A) does have health consequences. I'm of the opinion that it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to health concerns -- what damage can I do by reducing the amount of plastic in our lives? -- so I've tried to switch to using glass or ceramic cups and containers whenever possible. I actually bought two 12 ounce Klean Kanteen bottles yesterday for my daughters at the Container Store and will post about how they're working out after a few days, but seeing this article made me wish I'd bought more so that I could throw away (or recycle if I can) the rest of our sippy cups.

In case you're wondering about the baby bottles or sippy cups you have at home, check page 3 of the Smart Plastics Guide (published by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy) to see if yours are listed. It's also a good primer on the different types of plastics and which ones to avoid -- their catchy "With your food, use 4, 5, 1, and 2 -- All the rest aren't good for you" phrase makes it easy to remember their recommendations.  

Refashioned giveaway

We went to see the ponies at Saratoga over Labor Day weekend (didn't win a dime, though), and we happened to go on "cooler bag" giveaway day (see the "before" picture at right). I initially thought that I shouldn't even take one because I don't need more logo-covered gear that I may or may not use, but having a cooler bag has been incredibly handy on preschool snack day in the past so I decided to pick one up. Since then I've had second thoughts -- could anything be more distasteful than sending a 4-year-old to school every day with a bag advertising a race track? 

But my daughter was really keen on the idea of it being her special snack bag, so I decided that I needed to figure out a way to cover up the logo. The bag is made of a nylon-type material, so I couldn't use iron-on patches, and using permanent markers to cover up the logo had an element of "defacing property" to it (another great message to send a child!). I finally settled on dimensional fabric paint. My daughter requested flowers, so I painted three on the front to cover up the logo (see the "after" pic at right... and no, I won't be offended if you laugh at my crafting skills) plus a heart on the side on the drink-holder compartment. It's still not quite as cute as I'd like it to be, but my daughter loves it and will happily use it every day, which is the best possible outcome. 

Focusing on "reuse"

I've focused on recycling and trying to buy eco-friendly products for some time, but I realized that I'm falling down on the "reusing" front. The "How to Recycle Anything" article I mentioned in my last post got my thinking about ways I could repurpose things, so I spent the past few days trying to come up with ways to reuse stuff. Here are a few changes I've made:

1. Use newspaper delivery bags for dog waste pick-up. I had been using maybe one per week of the blue plastic bags our NY Times is delivered in each day as a garbage bag for the car, but obviously that meant the other six were going in the garbage (our city doesn't accept plastic bags for recycling). I started collecting the bags and putting them next to the dog leash, which makes it easy to remember to take one with me when I walk the dog.

2. Reusing plastic soup containers. We're big soup eaters in our house (even during the summer), and are huge fans of the prepared soup at our local grocery store. The containers are recyclable, but I had never thought to reuse them first for leftovers or general storage. I'll think twice now before I toss them into the recycling bin.

3. Newspaper to clean mirrors. I'm not sure where I read to do this, but I know it was a trick of my Mom's: I used newspaper instead of paper towels to clean the bathroom mirrors yesterday and it worked great. It left fewer streaks and barely any lint, which is a problem with paper towels. I still recycled the newspaper, but I used it to clean the mirrors first (I'm sure it would work on glass, too).

More to come....