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The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced today that discount stores T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods sold 19 different recalled products to consumers between 2014 and 2019. In the case of five products, the stores’ parent company TJX initiated the recall. The products included the Rock ‘N Play and Kids II inclined infant sleepers, which are responsible for a number of fatalities, rattles that can break and pose a choking hazard, and electronics that overheat or explode.
Traveling on the road or through airports to get to your holiday destinations? Before you grab a quick bite, use the Chain Reaction scorecard to see which top restaurants are sourcing meat raised without routine antibiotic use.
Toys sent an estimated 226,000 kids went to the emergency room in 2018. A PIRG Consumer Watchdog report identifies some of the dangerous toys for sale and how to keep kids safe.
“This EPA framework falls short on so many levels. More than anything, it’s a disappointment because the agency sidesteps specific commitments to encourage reduction, reuse or redesign."
You toss your plastic water bottle in a recycling bin after coming home from a trip to the beach, hoping the plastic from that bottle will be in next year’s plastic bottle, right? It most likely will not. Currently, plastic can only be re-manufactured a limited number of times, at best into a lower quality product because it degrades each time it is recycled. The value of recycled plastic may be low enough that your bottle is instead burned in an incinerator or dumped into a landfill.
A few years ago, that plastic might have been sold to China or another foreign nation. However, over the last few years, countries across the Pacific are putting restrictions on importing U.S. waste. Without these export markets, the U.S. recycling industry is in serious trouble, as exemplified by your plastic bottle’s likely journey to a landfill or incinerator. Of course, using a reusable water bottle would have avoided this issue, and for that reason, reduction and reuse strategies are preferable to recycling, even when recycling works.
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