The Battle of the Sippy Cup
Kimberly Danek Pinkson, Founder of the EcoMom Alliance
So here I am, out in the world talking about going green, but there’s my son, completely, irrevocably and 100% prime time in love with his sippy cup. His plastic sippy cup. The one that satisfies his midnight soymilk addiction.
As all moms know, plastics are unbreakable, lightweight, generally inexpensive and very convenient. And let’s face it, after the very first time you took your first baby out to run errands, convenience became a driving factor in many a decision (i.e. the midnight sippy cup).
However, the long-term price of convenience, when it means risking your child’s health, or his chance to swim in a clean lake, is not worth it. Plastics are extremely toxic for both your planet and your health. They are made from petroleum, a non-renewable, and mostly imported, resource. And all that great packaging? Imagine it in your local landfill.
The use of plastics in food storage and cooking has been linked to cancers, birth defects, poor brain/nervous system development and endocrine disruption, which, among other things, causes premature onset of secondary sex characteristics (early puberty). As if all that weren’t enough, plastic manufacturing and incineration creates air and water pollution that sends those chemicals right back into our rivers, soil, food chain, and then into your body. Not a pretty picture.
So what to do? Thanks to some forward thinking engineers, entrepreneurial moms and a few good old-fashioned options, there are alternatives to plastic that are both convenient and healthy...
“Tupperware”-like containers made out of corn. Non-toxic, steel water bottles with cute little designs on the cover. Good old-fashioned wood toys. The list goes on and on, and there are countless resources for more information (including the EcoMomAlliance.org website). But what do you do when your 5 year old just can’t quite quit his plastic habits? Well, I did what most evolved, mature, wise mothers would do: I bargained, begged, cajoled and finally, cried.
Maybe it was just that I’m a single mom, running a new non-profit organization, struggling to sustain myself while I talk about sustainability, and some days I just get really tired. Maybe it was because I was PMS-ing (but I don’t really think I do, do you think I do?).
Or maybe it was just because it was almost midnight and I had just, finally, fallen asleep. But when Corbin wandered in and woke me up saying “Momma, where’s my soymilk?” and then proceeded to start crying when I handed him his new, cool, eco-savvy cup, I just burst into tears. How could he forget our conversations of the past few days? Where was my sweet little buddy who had, just weeks earlier, told me he wanted to be an EcoKid? Turns out he was just like the rest of us. Doing our best to change one step at a time but at the moment, feeling like he just needed the security of the tried and true.
After a few more tries, he was happy with his SIGG thermos and the sippy cup has gone into the recycling bin, but the lesson has stayed with me: As easy as it is to go green in some ways, some other days, you just have to work a little bit harder. But compared to not doing it at all, it still feels worth it.
And now, Corbin’s trying to convert several of his friends too.
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Where did you find these cups? I want to get some, do they make bottles as well?