Junk Toys

So I just watched An Inconvenient Truth. You know, the Al Gore global warming movie. Tray and I are not always the most eco-conscious people, but we do try in a lot of ways. We've recently been trying to not use our clothes drier at all and hanging clothes up outside instead. One of the reasons I chose to use cloth diapers was because I couldn't stand the thought of all those disposable diapers and wipes (and untreated sewage) going into a landfill. So, we are conscious of it.

We've also always wanted eco-friendly toys for Penny, but I find it interesting how such a desire for eco-friendly baby things can be derided. Like, there seems to be a fair amount of eye-rolling about it, as though parents who want only wooden toys and things that don't require batteries are crunchy hippy types who are clueless about children "really" want to play with. That saddens me greatly because I think they miss the point. It's about doing what's right for the environment, which is also what's right for our children in the long run. I believe that it is important to buy products made from sustainable materials using sustainable energy sources and things that are made as locally as possible. (Tray absolutely refuses to purchase anything made in China, and always complains when we get stuff that is, but that's another story.) It's a tall order to find things like that, but we try.

What got me thinking about all this (besides the movie)? I read a blog post over on the Crunchy Domestic Goddess website recently about junk toys and it came on the heels of an article in the Times about people who overdo it at Christmas. I don't know why it hadn't sunk in for me before, but the combination of the two really drove home the idea that all this stuff winds up somewhere. As the article states, you don't throw things "away." They don't go away. They go to a landfill. So while I know that a certain amount of junk stuff is inevitable, we will continue to try to limit it in our house, regardless of the eye-rolling.