Supporting Breastfeeding-Friendly Businesses...

In celebration of Breastfeeding Awareness Week and breastfeeding-friendly businesses everywhere, I met with LLL Leader Suzy Provine and asked her a few questions about her groups latest outreach program...the sticker campaign...

TGM: What is the sticker campaign?

Suzy: Have you ever been out and about with your breastfeeding baby and been offered a comfy place to sit or a glass of water? Found a place that really, truly welcomes moms and nursing babies?

Then let's thank those businesses where we have found ourselves comfortable nursing by giving them a card and free sticker with the International Breastfeeding Symbol to display in their window. Let the next nursing mother who visits their establishment know right away that she can be comfortable there with her child.

La Leche League of Northern Anne Arundel has created a friendly card that you can carry with you to give by hand or send by mail to any business you would like to THANK for helping you and your baby have a comfortable visit in their establishment.

TGM: What brought about starting this campaign?

Suzy: One of our group mothers was told she could not feed her baby in a local business that caters to children. Rather than try to change the policies of that business, we decided it would be more productive, and more positive, to recognize the good places rather than the bad.

TGM: How do others obtain stickers?

Suzy: Anyone who makes a donation to La Leche League of Northern Anne Arundel of $5 will receive a sticker and card set. Contact any of our Group Leaders for stickers.

TGM: Can anyone participate?

Suzy: Absolutely! We would love to see this sticker on business windows everywhere!

TGM: So far, where can we see these breastfeeding-friendly stickers?

Suzy: We just started. The first stickers went up at the Bruster's Ice Cream store in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

Read Your Labels! What to Ingredients to Avoid

If most of your time shopping is spent reading labels, you're not alone. More and more moms are wising up and informing themselves about the beneficial and harmful effects ingredients in everyday products have on their families.

You do your homework. You read your labels. But do you know which ones you should be avoiding and why?

Pull out some of the things you already own at home: shampoo, sunscreen, toothpaste, hand soap... You've checked them before, but check them again. You might need to rethink your choices and find more healthy alternatives for you and your family.

Here are some of the worst offenders in ingredients, along with what they may be doing to you and your family:

• Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) - skin irritant with mutagenic effects
  
  
• Parabens - causes breast cancer
  
  
• Propylene Glycol - alters skin structure for other chemicals
  
  
• Phthalates (aka: fragrance) - disrupts hormones; decreases sperm mobility; genital abnormalities in baby boys; linked to asthma and allergies
  
  
• Petrolatum (aka: mineral oil, Vaseline) - banned in Europe, linked to breast cancer
  
  
• Cocomide DEA/Lauramid DEA - human immune system toxicant
  
  
• Diazolidinyl Urea - human carcinogen and nasopharyngeal cancer
  
  
• Butyl Acetate - skin, eye, and lung irritant
  
  
• Butylated Hydroxytoluene - human immune system toxicant and neurotoxin
  
  
• Ethyl Acetate - linked to cancer, developmental and reproductive deformities; skin, eyes, and lung irritant
  

This short list, borrowed from the Environmental Working Group, is just the tip of the iceberg. To learn more about all the dangerous chemicals found in our everyday products - and why we should be avoiding them - go to www.ewg.org today.

Should Trash Collection Be Free?

A friend of mine owns and runs her own business. She is a very eco-conscious person, eats whole organic foods, and is raising four greenies of her own. However, when I asked her if her business regularly recycles - assuming the answer would be an astounding yes - I was shocked when she said no.

"Businesses have to pay to recycle."

"Then why don't you pay to recycle?" I asked perplexed, wondering if I had missed the punchline to her joke.

"Because it's expensive," she answered point blank. "Besides, trash collection is free."

"What?"

Of course, this conversation took place a few years ago and since then my dear Earth loving friend pays for recycling to be picked up. Only problem is, they still don't make it easy for her...sometimes they don't even recycle what they promised, putting the stuff in the dump anyway!

That brief conversation got me thinking though: why on Earth would a going green government charge businesses to do so themselves, yet allow them to continue to trash our environment for free? And if the gov't is actually interested in helping change the course of destroying our earth for a greener future, when are we going to see this change?

If you think about the mass amount of trash that businesses create - paper, plastic, cardboard, office equipment - and multiply that by how many businesses there are...I think our green movement is lacking tremendously when we seem to be focusing more on what the individual can do at home. There should be a bigger focus on the huge trash producers. And maybe the first step at bringing them into this green game is by charging for the very thing that they get for free: trash collection.

Shouldn't recycling be a free service? Isn't someone out there - companies that create new materials out of recycled stuff - benefiting from our green actions?

On the flip side, dumping countless items into a landfill is costing us more and more: more land, more resources, our health and the health of the planet...

So the question is, when are we going to see the shift? Is this shift something that will never happen? Am I dreaming here thinking that recycling be the free service?

Is this just something that happens here on the east coast where I live? Is trash collection whre you live the charged service, and recycling free?

Should recycling be free?

What do you think?