Green Play: A Toy Safety Fair - Dec. 6, 2008 - at ChildTrek Natural Toys
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008Contact: Annette Roth, Marketing Director
IR2 Media Group Inc.
Phone: 253-212-037
Email: aroth@ir2media.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Please join us for Green Play: A Toy Safety Fair
At ChildTrek, located in historic Freighthouse Square
December 6, 2008 from 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
On December 6, 2008 from 10 am – 6 pm, ChildTrek (www.childtrek.com) will be hosting Green Play: A Toy Safety Fair. This informative safety fair is designed to provide parents and child-care providers information about various harmful elements and chemical in toys, and to help them become proactive consumers.
A number of activities are scheduled for the fair, including:
- Test Your Toys: Hosted by Essco Safety Check, our customers can bring their children’s toys to our store to test them for harmful elements and chemicals, with state of the art equipment. You can use this FREE service to find out what, if any, toxic metals or chemicals are present in your kids’ toys, including lead, cadmium, or mercury.
- Green Initiatives: Learn about current and prospective policies and initiatives designed to protect you and your family against toxic pollution. Highly informative.
- School-Readiness Advice: Talk with preschool and elementary teachers to get practical school-readiness advice for your child.
- Test for Lead: Designed specifically for pregnant and breastfeeding women, we are offering a service that allows you to test for lead levels in your own body.
All of these activities are FREE to the public. There will also be great toy giveaways and specials, available especially for this informative event. More at http://www.childtrek.com/toy-safety-fair-2008.html.
What is ChildTrek?
ChildTrek is South Sound’s newest eco-friendly toy store, located at Tacoma’s historic Freighthouse Square. In its very first year in business, ChildTrek was recently voted by King 5 Evening Magazine as a Top 5 Winner in the Children’s Gift category. ChildTrek features unique, fun, green toys and books for children, babies and toddlers. All toys sold at ChildTrek are child-safe and non-toxic, finished with beeswax, water- or vegetable-based dyes, or non-toxic paints.
For more information, please contact us, customercare@childtrek.com. You can also visit the user-friendly and highly-informative website at www.childtrek.com.
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All Plan Toys are made with clean, natural rubberwood recycled from rubber trees that would otherwise be cut and burned. This process emits carbon emissions, creating carbon gasses that contribute to global warming. Plan Toys breaks this cycle by making high-quality toys with this beautiful hardwood. If that were not enough, Plan Toys takes the time to stabilize the wood using a chemical-free kiln-drying process instead of chemical preservatives.
As we swam with wildly beautiful sea creatures in the serenity of the Belize Barrier Reef, I felt the warm waters lift and console me. Had I not worn a snorkeling mask, the sea would have reclaimed my tears as its own.
It was with this knowledge that I began to see piles of toys corralled in corners or stuffed in closets of various homes. They had always been there. But this time, I saw them in a different light.
After swimming in the dark for over nine months, our child pushed out into the big, bright world rather hurriedly. As the nurses wrapped and gave our crying baby to me, I asked, “Well, what is it?” In the speed of the delivery, they had forgotten to look. So I unwrapped our newborn, lifted one leg, and announced, “It’s a girl!”
I began to go recall the places I’ve been – to the threatened Belize Barrier Reef, to the crowded cities of Guatemala, Japan and Italy, to the parched islands of Greece, to the disappearing rainforests of the Philippines, to the cities across the United States where green hills and plains are now blanketed with concrete. Are we creating Mayan cities on a global scale?
The year before our daughter was born, my husband, Bart, and I went to Central America. In Belize, we stayed in Caye Caulker – a small tropical island getting smaller by the year.
The Belize government has taken measures to protect parts of the reef. But its jurisdiction and, therefore, its effectiveness go only so far. For now the green sea turtles and the manatees swim in the warm waters like they have since before humans. But their numbers are dwindling and their fate is tied to what’s happening around them. The oceans are rising and cooling as the icebergs melt.
On Caye Caulker, there’s a sign that’s at once command, plea, and reminder of the island’s way of life, “Go slow.” It’s quite ironic that many of us fly south for a chance to relax only to find that our fast-paced lifestyle is threatening the Edens of the world.
With the populace and its way of life gone, Mother Nature reclaimed the abandoned city by blanketing it with her nurturing seeds and soil carried by wind and rain. A lush and thriving eco-system grew over what was once a prosperous urban center. Its memory faded until nearly a thousand years passed when a group of archeologists realized that in the dense jungle were not hills, but the remains of a great Mayan city. They soon discovered that the once open plazas and sprawling pyramids were consumed by the rainforest, buried beneath dirt and trees. Only the tops of palaces and temples jutted above the canopy. A massive excavation of the past would follow.
Even as I soaked in the massive beauty before me, this tranquility was interrupted by gnawing questions. Where would we all go if we use up our immediate environment? Do we ask more of our neighbor’s? Are we willing to go to war to secure what they have to meet our needs? And how will Mother Nature be able to reclaim the land as we demand more of her?
As we left Guatemala and Belize, a deep excitement and anxiety began to set in: If we don’t start working with nature, we may not be around for the rebound. A seed took root that summer. Perhaps it’s been there for some time. But by the end of the trip, it stirred in me a need to be part of the work. I just didn’t know how yet.