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	activism alerts december 2007

Stop the Catalogues, Save the Planet
• Tell McDonald's: No Advertising on Report Cards
• PVC Update

Each year, drug executives spend $4 billion on prescription drug ads for pills they say will make you feel happier, sleep better and improve your sex life.

The ads are not educational, and do not promote public health. They can be extremely dangerous, as the Vioxx tragedy shows.

The Public Health Protection Act will stop all direct-to-consumer drug ads. Thirty-nine organizations have endorsed this legislation.

Please lend your voice to the cause: tell your Members of Congress to support the Public Health Protection Act. Take action now.

By now, we all know that our environment's got problems. Uncontrolled logging and rainforest decimation have brought us to the point where we have lost roughly half of our planet's trees. The catalogue industry alone is responsible for the destruction of more than eight million tons of trees each year.

Now, thanks to a project sponsored by the Ecology Center and endorsed by both the National Wildlife Foundation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, there is a way we can control the flood of unwanted catalogues in our mailboxes—Catalog Choice.

Here's all you have to do: take that armload of catalogues spilling off your coffee table, and march to your computer. Log on to www.catalogchoice.org and follow the prompts. Once you have registered, follow the simple process of selecting those catalogues you don't want to receive, entering your customer number, and voila! The wizards behind the website contact the catalogers and remove your name from your chosen sites.

You can modify your preferences at anytime, and also suggest catalogues that are not yet in the Catalog Choice database. The service is just over two months old, and there are almost 300,000 registered users, whose choices to stop receiving over 44 million catalogs next year will save 118,124 trees.*

* per Environmental Defense's Paper Calculator (www.papercalculator.org)

Schoolchildren in Seminole County, Florida recently received their report cards in envelopes adorned with Ronald McDonald promising a free Happy Meal to students in kindergarten through fifth grade with good grades, behavior, or attendance. Targeting children directly with the message that doing well in school should be rewarded by a Happy Meal undermines parents' efforts to encourage healthy eating. And if parents want to reward their kids' school performance, they are intelligent enough to determine what kind of reward, if any, is appropriate. They don't need any help from a corporation whose real concern is its bottom line.

The promotion highlights McDonald's duplicity when it when comes to marketing to children. McDonald's has pledged to stop all advertising in elementary schools. When questioned about the report cards, a McDonald's spokesperson claimed the promotion isn't marketing. If that's what McDonald's believes, their pledge isn't worth the paper it is printed on.

McDonald's has also received kudos for its pledge to only advertise its healthier options to children under twelve, yet the Happy Meal promotion explicitly mentions cheeseburgers, French fries, and soft drinks; Happy Meals featured on the report card can contain as many as 710 calories, 28 grams of fat, or 35 grams of sugar.

Help to put an end this outrageous advertising.

Tell McDonald's: No advertising on report cards.

*If you live in Seminole County, please also take a moment to email the school board and urge them to end all report card advertising.

Source: www.commercialfreechildhood.org

With all of the toxic toy recalls, more and more parents feel like they're rolling the dice with their children's health when they go shopping. One of the things to avoid is polyvinyl chloride (PVC), better known as vinyl. It is the worst type of plastic for the environment and our health. The amount of PVC being used worldwide today contains a staggering 3.2 million tons of lead. Evidence suggests there is no other plastic that uses lead as an additive. While there are regulations limiting lead in paint that is on toys, there is no standard for how much lead is in PVC. Not only are children who play with some vinyl toys exposed to lead, but also to phthalates, which can harm the reproductive system. Over 90% of all phthalates are used in PVC products and are often found in many toys such as rubber duckies and bath books. When a child puts a PVC toy in his or her mouth, it's like sucking on a toxic lollipop. Last month, California joined the European Union and fourteen countries in banning the use of phthalates in children's and infant's products.

In an effort to prevent harm and do the right thing, many retailers and toy companies are beginning to move away from PVC. After a national campaign led by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) and a coalition of health and environmental organizations, Target has agreed to systematically reduce its use of PVC both in products and in packaging. The company is reducing PVC found in many of its own brand products including its own brand of infant items, baby bibs, children's eating utensils, lunchboxes and children's toys, as well as shower curtains, packaging and fashion accessories. Target is also phasing out phthalates in baby changing tables and most of their own brand toys, over time.

Fortunately, Target isn't the only company moving to clean up their products. A number of baby and children's toys manufactures such as Brio, Chicco, Evenflo, First Years, Gerber, International Playthings, Lamaze Infant Development, Lego Systems, Sassy, and Tiny Love have committed to phase out all PVC toys. Other toy manufacturers such as Discovery Toys and Manhattan Baby have also committed to phase out some PVC toys.

Yet, some toy companies, such as Mattel and Hasbro, while agreeing to phase out phthalates, have failed to entirely phase out PVC from their toys.

Parents and concerned consumers should avoid toys that are made out of PVC. Sometimes vinyl products are labeled with a "3" or "V" inside or below the recycling symbol, and safer products are occasionally labeled as PVC, lead and phthalate-free.

Lois Gibbs is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ).