Rachel Sarnoff is an environista who wants to help you shrink your carbon footprint (from an Ugg boot to a Manolo!) through daily eco-friendly fashion, beauty, parenting and lifestyle tips at EcoStiletto.
Cradle note: Check out EcoStiletto this month – they’re giving away a free pair (or pairs) of eco-friendly shoes worth $500 or more each and every month in 2009!
So, what’s Rachel currently crushing on? (You can count on it being eco-friendly!)
I’d love to dress all three of my children—all the world’s children, frankly—in organic cotton. The production of conventional cotton dumps a whole bunch of unnecessary pesticides and insecticides into the Earth, not to mention the residual chemicals that stay on the fabrics, which we put next to our little ones’ bodies. But organic cotton products tend to be more expensive than their conventional cousins, and with the amount of buying I have to do to keep my kids clothed, it can be prohibitive. Enter Green Babies, which has been providing affordably priced, fair-wage, American made, organic cotton clothing for babies and kids for so long it practically created the market. You can’t get much greener than that.
These butter-soft blankies are made in the U.S. with 100-percent certified organic cotton fleece or velour, available in a brilliant array of colors created by low-impact, heavy-metal free dyes. And best of all, they’re machine washable – with eco-friendly laundry soap, of course.
I’m all for creating healthy meals from locally sourced foods that I found at the farmer’s market. But most 
days, dinnertime involves finding the fastest way to get healthy food on the table and into my kids’ mouths before we jump back onto the Habitrail of baths, books and bed. So I was overjoyed to see Plum Organics – which I knew for their frozen baby food – jump in to the realm of packaged meals for kids, giving me an extra option in the freezer when I’ve run out of time or inspiration. Do not mistake Plum Organics Kids meals for the TV dinners Grandma served up when you were a child. These are organic, healthy meals, heavy on the vegetables and low in sodium and fat, but yummy enough to have your kids asking for seconds. In which case, you can open another box.
These round little balls of fun fizz up when they hit the water, infusing it with fair trade-sourced shea butter and essential oils, letting you clean up your kids stealth-style while they’re busy having fun chasing the bubbler around the bath. What’s more fair than that?
You agonize over the car seat and whether or not to vaccinate. You buy chlorine-free diapers and swaddle in organic cotton. But the place that you think is safest may be the most dangerous of all: Your baby’s bedroom. Formaldehyde, which has been identified by the EPA as a carcinogen, is widely used
in children’s furniture that’s made with plywood, particleboard, paint and wood glue. I wish I’d known this when I was buying furniture for my little ones, because I would have chosen piece by Q Collection Junior, which produces zero-to-low VOC, formaldehyde-free furniture, and also considers the environmental impact of its production. They buy 85% of their sustainably harvested wood from responsibly managed forests within 100 miles of their production facilities and 100% within 500 miles. Their door handles and drawer pulls are made from Tagua nut wood sustainably harvested and fair trade produced in the Central and South American rain forest. They are founding members of The Sustainable Furniture Council (SFC) and have Forest Stewardship Council chain-of-custody certification. And they donate to 1% for the Planet. Did I happen to mention that their furniture happens to be ridiculously cute, too?
Remember pick-up sticks? That game with the multicolored straws that your brother always cheated at? Now Beyond Learning, which manufactured the world’s first eco-friendly games back in 2006, has transformed this family favorite into a reading readiness game for preschoolers. Created from eco-friendly, sustainable bamboo, the Pick-Up Words sticks are veggie-ink printed with rainbow colors and basic, non-phonetic sight words like “write,” “friend” and “these” that kids need to master in order to read. Easy to stow in a backpack or bag, the game comes in a tube made from recycled and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified paper and formaldehyde-free glue and printed with vegetable inks. The game is perfect to play with parents (or older siblings, providing they stay honest).
