Safety concerns put suburban parents in bind for recycling baby gear

This summer, Wheaton mother-of-four Liz Handler and her neighbors hosted a garage sale to raise money for the Gulf Coast oil cleanup efforts.

They put out dozens of high chairs, car seats, Pack ‘N Plays, cribs and children's toys. Some of it sold, but a lot of it didn't.

The next morning, Handler arranged for a Goodwill truck to pick up the remaining items, including Peg Perego and Eddie Bauer high chairs in perfectly good condition. But Goodwill refused to take most of their leftover baby gear.

“It was probably $4,000 to $5,000 worth of stuff they didn't take, said Handler, author of the parenting blog makingitfun.net. “We ended up putting it all out on the curb.

Recent safety recalls of children's products everything from jogging strollers and cribs to this month's recall of 11 million Fisher Price toys have led to new rules about what baby items some resale shops will accept. Some of the most popular donation spots like Marklund, Goodwill and Salvation Army no longer accept used car seats, strollers, high chairs and cribs.

“It's frustrating for everyone, said Jeff Curnow, spokesman for the Salvation Army's Midwest office in Des Plaines. “And it's a shame. Because people could really use these things. But you don't want to give someone something that's not safe.

More than 57 million cribs, car seats, bassinets, strollers, travel systems, play yards, high chairs and toddler beds have been recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the past 10 years. According to consumer advocacy organization Kids In Danger, less than 30 percent of these recalled items are returned, meaning millions of unsafe products could still be in the marketplace.

Resale shops do their best to pull recalled items off their shelves, but it's a time-consuming task. Goodwill, for example, now sends weekly safety recall notices to its stores, educates the employees who sort through the donations, and orders routine spot-checks on store shelves, said Cheryl Lightholder, spokeswoman for Goodwill Industries of Southeast Wisconsin and Metropolitan Chicago.

“If it's used, you don't know. And safety is our first concern, Lightholder said. “You want to protect your customers, and you don't want any liability.

The new rules leave parents with few options on how to dispose of their used children's items. They'll hand items down to friends, bring them to local rummage sales, find smaller charities that will accept the items, or give them away on Craigslist or Freecycle. But a lot of it ends up at the curb.

“Dumpster divers and junk collectors often pick up these items, but plastic toys and baby gear in less-than-perfect condition are often destined for landfills.

“It's horrifying. It really is, says eco-activist Lynn Hasselberger of North Barrington, who blogs at icountformyearth.wordpress.com. “You can't get away from purchasing plastic. They have to stop making this stuff.

While some parents have no problem using a hand-me-down car seat or crib, others prefer to buy new products since recalls can be hard to track.

“I see car seats at the curb all the time. They're almost like bicycle helmets. They're much better now than they were even two years ago, said Kay McKeen, who heads up the SCARE recycling organization in Glen Ellyn.

McKeen takes old items apart, recycling what she can, but realizes that's above and beyond what most people will do. She encourages parents to destroy a potentially dangerous or recalled children's item before putting it out for the garbage cutting the straps on recalled child seats, for example so people don't pick them up and reuse them, putting innocent children in danger.

The Gurnee Police Department is one of only a few places in the country with a car seat recycling program. Two months ago, the department began encouraging people from all over the Chicago area to bring in their outdated or unwanted car seats. The seats are crushed and delivered to a local plastics manufacturer that melts down the plastic and reuses it.

It's beneficial from both a safety and environmental standpoint, says Wendy Mann, the police department's Child Safety Program Coordinator.

“You shouldn't resell car seats, because you don't know their history. They may have been in a crash ... and they can actually break, she said. “We come across a lot of seats that shouldn't be used anymore. Anything that's older than six years shouldn't be used.

The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission doesn't have firm rules on how old a product has to be before it's deemed unsafe; it varies by brand, and can be found at manufacturers' websites.

To help parents research recalled items, Toys R Us and Babies R Us stores recently launched a Product Safety Vigilance Program (at Toysrus.com/Safety). The company also hosted its third “Great Trade-In event last month, which to date has netted more than 200,000 old or recalled baby items. Anyone who brings in an item receives a coupon for future purchases.

With more recalls likely on the horizon, parents will continue to wrangle with the appropriate way to pass on their used baby items.

“I've sold a lot of my stuff at school sales and Craigslist, just so it's not going into a landfill, said mother of two Heather Goudreau of St. Charles. “I would love to help parents who don't have money to buy a used $250 stroller and give resources on where to find this stuff.