Plastic Free For the Holidays

Since we now know that BPA is found in baby bottles, water bottles, infant formula, and even our canned foods, one of my goals has been to change my plastic habits. If you have this goal, too, you should know about this free bag of enviro-friendly goodies the Environmental Working Group is offering for the holidays.

Weaning my family off of plastic has been harder than I would have thought.

I’m pretty good about bringing my own canvas bags to the grocery stores, and getting better about bringing them to places like Target. I tossed all the sippy cups… well, except for a few with retractable straws that I keep for those times when you just don’t want a spill on the couch. I figure, using glassware most of the time and plastic cups only occassionally, must be keeping us mostly safe from BPAs.

As I said, I’m having a hard time giving up all of my plasticware. Especially plastic food storage containers and zip-top baggies.

The thought of giving up my Tupperware drawer (now mostly Glad and Ziploc) is enough to make me hyperventilate. What are the alternatives? At any given moment, I might have 5 or more plastic storage containers of food in my fridge. And what am I supposed to use when I load my freezer with containers of homemade soups?

I remember when I used to clean out and use jars from pickles, marinara sauce, and salsa for storing and freezing soups. This was in my starving artist days after college when I worked in an art gallery in Santa Fe and waitressed at night. The problem with using glass jars for freezing is that they can shatter if you fill them too full. Which, of course, happened to me more than once. In those days, I would just remove the glass, rinse the frozen cylinder of soup with hot water to remove the outer layer, and heat up whatever was left to eat. As my husband and I remark to each other at times, “You probably won’t find this in the good parenting manual.”

Do you know the truth about your bottled water? Your cosmetics? Your infant formula? Your canned food?

The Environmental Working Group researches, exposes and informs you about toxic chemicals and hidden contaminants in everything from your shampoo to your kitchen cupboard. Then we offer “pollution solutions” to help you make healthier choices every day.

Take their fight against bisphenol A (BPA). EWG helped expose the risks of BPA – a potent hormone disrupter that’s been leaching toxic chemicals into countless everyday items. BPA is found in baby bottles, water bottles, infant formula and even our canned foods. They’ve been fighting non-stop to make sure BPA is banned from consumer products.

As consumers, it’s hard to know how to avoid BPA. That’s why they filled our 2008 Pollution Solutions Holiday Gift Bag with BPA-free goodies to keep you healthy and also reduce waste.

When you make your first-time donation to EWG of $135 or more, your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar by generous donors and they’ll send you a Pollution Solutions Holiday Gift Bag.

As a special incentive, the first 500 donors who order the gift bag will also receive a complimentary copy of the book Green Goes With Everything by Sloan Barnett.

Curious about what’s in the bag? Check out these great items:

– A 27 oz. Klean Kanteen stainless steel bottle — the perfect solution to using less plastic and avoiding contaminated bottled water
– Jumbo Enviro-Tote made from 100% recycled plastic, printed with EWG’s pollution solutions
– 6-piece Pyrex glass container set (no more Tupperware!)
– Crummy Brothers organic chocolate chip cookies
– $25 in free product coupons plus EWG’s most popular tools for healthy living

Donating to EWG is a great investment. They pride ourselves on staying lean and stretching your donations to the limit — so your money goes toward groundbreaking research and sweeping environmental change. And with a more environmentally friendly Congress and Presidential administration on the way in, EWG will have even more opportunities in 2009 to push for the kind of change we need to protect our health and our environment.

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