How to reduce plastic waste
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Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff, Mommy Greenest, shares advice for for parents on how to reduce your families plastic waste at home
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I think we have been conditioned that we need to buy plastic everything. Plastic bottles, plastic water bottles, plastic sippy cups. All of those things are manufactured in plastic. The spoons that they are using. The bowels that they are using.
But, really, for so many years, children were raised without plastic at all. They just used what their parent's used. I think it's another, sort of, shift that we can make. It's really looking at moving your child away from that sippy cup. Maybe it's moving away, as I did my six month old child. She learned to drink from a cup. We thought, "Hey, why don't we just try it?" Sure enough, she could do it. It was amazing.
Maybe when you are going out to dinner, you'll think about -- They will come and ask you what your kids want to drink, ask if you could have it in a glass cup, just like everybody else. When you are buying plastics and sometimes we have to, look at the bottom and really avoid the ones that have the little chasing arrow symbols. The ones, three or six.
Those are the most toxic. They leach hormone disrupting chemicals into your food. Those are the things you really want to avoid. The other thing is, when you are using plastics out of necessity, try not to heat them. Don't microwave them. Don't put hot food into them and close the top and keep them that way. What that does is it heats up the plastic and releases toxins into the food.
So, avoid one, three, and six. Look for alternatives like glass or stainless steel, when it comes to things like sippy cups. Even just try to teach your kids from an earlier age to use the same glassware and forks that you do.
Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff, Mommy Greenest, shares advice for for parents on how to reduce your families plastic waste at home
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Rachel Lincoln SarnoffMommy Greenest
Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff blogs as MommyGreenest.com, founded EcoStiletto.com, is the former CEO of Healthy Child Healthy World and was editor of Children magazine—before she had kids. Rachel was featured in Los Angeles and Lucky magazines and appeared on “Today” and “CNN Headline News,” among others, to talk about leading a judgment-free, more sustainable lifestyle. A non-profit consultant and pre/postnatal yoga teacher, Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children, who range in age from kindergartener to teen.
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