Eco Child’s Play

For some reason, when I think of products that need to ‘go green’, certain types of items tend to top the list.  Cleaning products.  Plastic children’s toys.  Paint and building materials.  Baby supplies.  Food.  Clothing.

Playing cards had not yet entered my mind.

So imagine my amused surprise the other day when, while shopping for a new deck of quality cards for bridge (my husband had even requested a plastic set), I stumbled across Bicycle’s new (launched in 2008) line of Eco Edition Playing Cards.

While there is almost certainly a good level of bandwagon-jumping greenwashing going on here, there is still much good to say about these cards.  According to Bicycle:

Our playing cards are crafted from sustainable forest paper, starch-based laminating glue and vegetable-based printing inks.  This pack of cards is recyclable.

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I have long been a fan of EO (Essential Oil) products.  I discovered EO when I was searching Environmental Working Group’s cosmetic database Skin Deep for products that would not irritate my son’s sensitive skin.  EO was the answer, as they never use irritating sodium lauryl or laureth sulfates, and I quickly adopted the products into my preschool classroom, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

SIGG bottles, long upheld as the standard by which all non-plastic drink bottles should be compared, favourite of hippies and eco-gurus, juggernaut and arguably the biggest player in the metal bottle industry, has finally fessed up.

Their “water-based epoxy liner”, long rumoured (but never confirmed) to contain BPA, indeed had BPA all along.

SIGG kept this cozy little secret by constantly releasing reassuring statements that their proprietary formula had been extensively tested and was never found to leach BPA.

The subtle truth hidden in their messages was that they never said there was no BPA in there to begin with.  But now, one entire year after changing their liner to a new “EcoCare”, BPA-free formula, they are now admitting what so many have suspected all along.

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One Small Step was founded by a mom who needed alternatives for her daughter’s lunches. Renata Bodon’s daughter’s school requires waste free lunches.

That led to One Small Step, an online resource for reusable, eco-friendly, stylish, and environmentally safe lunch products and food wraps with no BPA, no phthalates, and no PVC.

In addition to eco-lunch containers, reusable sandwich wraps, and environmentally friendly lunch bags One Small Step also carries eco backpacks, EcoStaplers, and Greenciles (pencils) for your back to school needs. Read the rest of this entry »

Kidzsack is an eco-friendly backsack made from 100% recycled cotton and soda bottles. A cute bag for back to school, the end of summer, or just to have for fun these bags allow a child’s creativity to come through.

The Kidzsack comes with a set of 8 washable markers that kids can use to decorate the bags. Then they can be washed and colored again. It’s usable coloring sheet for kids to enjoy.

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Our home is filled with eco-friendly toys, largely sent to us for review here on Eco Child’s Play, and we have a family commitment to avoid junk toys. Not only are junk toy materials bad for the environment and your children’s health, Climate Counts has discovered that toy companies are ignoring their impact on climate change. Read the rest of this entry »

Mama bloggers get a lot of free stuff. And that was one of the issues discussed at BlogHer ‘09. There, I met many ladies who said the boxes of goodies would be piled high by the time they got home.

Companies look for cheap advertising in the form of positive reviews. And they often turn to broke mom bloggers with the promise of free stuff to lure them into a few kind words.

And as “green” has become the “new black”, many products are greenwashed, hocked to green-minded bloggers in the hopes that we’ll overlook some of the obvious faults and rebrand the crap the product for them.

Maybe you and I know to look for parabens and fragrance, but does the average blogger, who may gush over the “green”?

NPR’s All Things Considered looked at the swag issue on Monday. Read the rest of this entry »

I spent this weekend at the biggest conference for bloggers in the world, Blogher or as we know it on Twitter #blogher09! Bloggers streamed into Chicago from all walks of life, including a few Eco Childs Play bloggers. I was able to attend the conference thanks to my sponsor, Goddard Child Development Centers.

Yup, Goddard’s going green and I’m in support of anywhere that children congregate going green so I was happy to accept their sponsorship. And, I enjoyed seeing all the women who attended Blogher sporting babies in slings, lugging breast pumps and promoting green living, including the Blogher organizers.

While I did my best to have a green conference, I have some tips for myself for attending Blogher next year or for any other trip I take.

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Rosie Hippo offers parents a place to shop for unique, handmade, organic, fair trade and eco-friendly toys.

They have toys made of wood, made of fair trade materials, they have stuffed animals, pretend play toys, and everything you need to spark your child’s imagination and give them something safe to play with. Read the rest of this entry »

We paid a visit recently to one of my favourite toy stores in the whole world, Hot Toads.  The physical store itself isn’t all that impressive — it’s a small, concrete-floored basement room in a medical building, with sparsely-stocked wooden shelves, draped with puppets and stuffed toys hanging by clothespins from simple lines strung across the room.  The back wall features a working 10-foot long model train table made entirely out of Lego.

But it’s not about the decor — it’s what they carry that makes this place special.  Plan Toys.  HaPe.  Schylling.  Plastic toys made from recycled milk jugs.  Non-toxic wooden toys.  Toys intended to enrich the mind and body of your children, not just feed into consumerism and branding.

And for me, it is a local store, within driving distance, right here in Atlantic Canada.  Unfortunately for my American friends reading this, while they do take online orders, Hot Toads only delivers within Canada.  Sorry, eh?

One of the many cool items they have is a line of large toy cars called E-Racers, from HaPe’s Bamboo Collection.  I had a nice chat with the fellow working there, and learned that apparently these were the first toys to be made from bamboo.  I was surprised that, while bamboo has been used for clothes, cutlery and dinnerware, flooring and even wallpaper for some time, the idea of bamboo toys was still relatively new.

He also filled me in on a fact I had previously been unaware of.  Of course, bamboo is the new golden child of the eco movement: it grows easily and quickly without pesticides, and is therefore a readily renewable resource with low environmental impact.  Bamboo wood is attractive and sturdy, and bamboo cloth is soft and has natural antibacterial properties.  As worldwide consumer demand for bamboo has increased dramatically in recent years, some companies have taken to clear-cutting hardwood forests in order to make room for bamboo plantations.  And despite bamboo’s rapid growth, difficulty in seed propagation combined with over-harvesting has even threatened some species to near-extinction.

Ugh.

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