Green-mom angst: Plastics

Every morning when she wakes up, my three-year-old daughter asks for her “milky bottle.” Never mind that she’s three and still drinking out of a bottle. That’s another story. This story is about the bottle itself, and in particular what it’s made of: plastic. Toxic plastic. In my life as a parent, plastic is a material I’ve become acutely and uncomfortably familiar with. It surrounds me; it drowns me; it irks me. And yet, until now, I’ve done very little about it.

You might remember the media hype that began last fall after studies proved certain plastics were leaching toxins into our children’s hands and mouths. Tests were conducted on three major brands of polycarbonate baby bottles sold in Canada and the U.S. The results: all of them leached detectable amounts of Bisphenol A, a synthetic chemical that mimics the hormone estrogen, which can stimulate the growth of cancer cells. According to these studies, exposure to BPA at a young age can cause genetic damage and has been linked to recurrent miscarriage in women. In young children, whose immune and organ systems are developing, the health risks are significantly amplified.

Since those studies came out, more research has been slowly making its way to the public, not just on the leaching effects of plastic baby bottles, but of polycarbonate water bottles and many other types of plastic as well. All this has translated into a growing awareness of the dangers lurking in our reliance on plastic. For me, it has translated into a huge boulder of guilt that sits on my chest every day.

I read the newspaper stories with alarm, and then, I forgot all about them. I continued, for months, to wake up and hand over my daughter’s toxic Playtex baby bottle filled with “milky.” But it wasn’t mindless. Every time I filled up her bottle, I filled myself up with remorse at my lack of action. The voice in my head shouted, “Bad Mommy! Bad Mommy!” And yet I continued to give it to her.

Partly, it was that I couldn’t be bothered to find the time to research where to get a BPA-free baby bottle. Partly, I felt that a little chemical leaching in a world of chemical leaching wasn’t going to have much impact. Now I know I’m wrong.

It’s a confusing and challenging path to environmentally conscious parenthood. As the wave of interest in all things green crescendos,more

“We’re in ignorant bliss over the plastic sippy cups and bottles,” says Gabrielle Kissinger, a Vancouver mother of two boys who works at Forest Ethics and whose husband works at Ecotrust. You couldn’t find a greener family. They don’t have a car. They eat organic; they compost and recycle. And yet she admits the story about the BPA-infected plastic bottles didn’t register with them. “We don’t get too worked up about heating up our plastic bottles in the microwave occasionally,” she says. “It might increase our exposure to one thing, but you’re being exposed to so much over your whole life. There’s not much you can do about it.”
That there’s not much we can do about it is a refrain I hear myself saying far too often. Every day after reading the story about the BPA scare, I vowed to make a trip to Shopper’s Drug Mart to see if they have BPA-free bottles for my daughter and BPA-free sippy cups for my son. Every day, I somehow forgot. This may seem unbelievable; certainly, it will seem to be un­believably neglectful parenting. But like many parents out there, I am routinely swept up in the craziness of life as a working parent. In the daily struggle between convenience and ethics, convenience – getting the kids home from school and dinner on the table – often wins.

But I aspire to be a good green parent. I am a bohemian, after all. I followed the Grateful Dead in high school. I backpacked around the world. When I had children, I wanted to raise them in an environment close to nature with toys made only from wood. Well, the joke’s on me.