Don’t you just hate broken promises? Like when your relative promises to stop smoking or to stop seeing that person who’s just plain bad for him/her, or when your friend promises to watch your kid while you go to something you’ve been waiting for all year, or when your spouse promises to stop leaving his or her dirty underwear in the floor…and then the promise is just never honored? Boy, that sucks.
What sucks even worse is when a company makes a big promise that affects plenty of people—and then just fails at keeping it, so thoughtlessly and uncaringly, as if it never even mattered to their customers. Toys R Us has done just that.
You may remember that back in 2008, Toys R Us promised to reduce its use of PVC in its products. It didn’t make the giant promise of eliminating PVC (wouldn’t THAT have been something?) or even phasing it out, but simply “reducing” the amount of PVC that it uses. That’s a pretty doable goal, you would think.
But Toys R Us must’ve forgot about this promise—a promise that’s pretty important to parents, especially when considering what kind of damage that PVC can do upon children. Polyvinyl chloride is also known as “the poison plastic” for a reason, after all. Not only does it have an adverse effect on our environment; it also causes major health concerns—from cancer to hormonal disruption and plenty of other problems. It even affects our immune systems—something that parents strive so hard to maintain every day in their children. In children, PVC may also cause obesity and learning disabilities!
It’s impossible to completely avoid it, unfortunately; everyone has levels of this toxic chemical in their blood.
That doesn’t, however, mean that we should be putting it in the things that our children play with. After two years, Toys R Us still hasn’t fulfilled its promise, and continues to sell as many PVC and PVC-wrapped toys (including baby products) as ever.
Please write to the toy company today and urge them to put the health of their tiniest customers first. Be sure to also use your spending power as a parent to stop this from happening; refuse to give your hard-earned dollars to a company that disregards the health of children. As long as we refuse to buy, the company will have to start selling healthier products if it wants our money.