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Use BPA-free cups and bottles

Why This is Green

Bisphenol-A (BPA) is an industrial chemical used to make, among many other things, polycarbonate plastic resins. It makes the plastic shatterproof, but it’s controversial stuff. Many countries and states have banned it due to links to developmental and reproductive impacts, but there is still no overarching federal ban. There has been so much governmental back and forth on the safety of BPA, it’s hard for the average consumer to know where it stands. Suffice it to say that The National Institutes for Health, the Endocrine Society, and the US National Toxicology Program have all expressed concern about the chemical. Congress has now moved to ban some uses for it.

Interestingly, consumers didn’t wait for our government to push companies to take BPA out of products. Parents were so vocal about not wanting it in products that it’s now easy to find baby bottles and sippy cups purporting to be BPA-free. Keep in mind that there is no government office regulating what is and isn’t BPA-free, it’s just a claim some companies make. For the moment, it’s up to consumers to decide what to trust.

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How To

In the numbers in those recycling arrows on the bottoms of plastic containers, BPA falls under the number 7. Confusingly, not all plastic number 7 contains BPA. If you’d like to use plastic, #2, #4, and #5 are the plastics currently considered safest by the scientific community.

Glass, stainless steel, and lead-free ceramic are BPA-free. They won’t leach other chemicals of concern found in plastics, either.