I’m trying to not buy anything plastic for my son. When I went to store to look for sippy cups, or water bottles with straws, all I found were plastic ones. They were BPA free (and all of that stuff) but I really didn’t want to buy plastic. Some of it comes from me not liking to eat or drink out of plastic so why should I have my kids use plastic.
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The other is there are reports out there that even though the plastic is BPA free is still leaches harmful chemicals, and now they are saying the BPA free plastic is just as toxic. Just replacing one toxin for another! I decided to error on the side of caution and started looking for glass or stainless sippy cups. I was pleasantly surprised that there were several options. These are the two that I went with:
Lifefactory bottle with sippy cup lid. This is a glass bottle with a silicone sleeve around the bottle and a plastic #5 sippy lid. I wish the sippy lid wasn’t plastic but it is. It is supposedly one of the safest plastics even thought I think plastic in general isn’t safe for kids. We ended up using the sippy lid part very infrequently. I do love this bottle since it is multipurpose. You can use the bottle and switch the lid to a sippy lid when you are ready for them to start water. When you move past the sippy lid phase you can just add a regular lid to use as a water bottle. As an added bonus I love all the fun colors that the sleeves come in! I bought this bottle and this sippy cup lid. The bottle and parts are made in the USA and Europe.
Pura Kiki with silicone sippy lid. This is a 18/8 stainless steel (food grade quality) bottle with a silicone sippy lid. This is the ONLY sippy cup on the market that doesn’t have a plastic lid. This is also multipurpose since it can be used as a bottle and as a sippy cup. I would think that this would be more durable if your kiddo dropped it from their high chair. I bought this bottle and this sippy spout (we have the clear sippy spout not the blue one pictured). Pure Kiki claims to not leak ever. Well my leaks all the time! It doesn’t actually leak if you hold it upside down. However, it is really easy to push the spout in and then all the water comes right out. My son is really good at doing that! I last tried this in 2013 so they may have made some changes to their sippy cup situation!
Pura Kiki with silicone straw also makes a stainless steel water bottle with a silicone straw. I’ve never used it but it looks interesting!
Another great option is just letting them use a small, durable cup like a mason jar. I just bought some 4 oz mason jars. They seriously don’t break ever. We have dropped them pretty much everywhere and hasn’t even chipped. At about a year my son was able to hold the mason jar and drink from it (no sippy lid just drinking like a regular cup). The challenge is now he thinks it’s fun to dump the water out while eat. My solution to that are these are lids for mason jars from Eco Jarz (not just to be used for kids). They are stainless lids for mason jars. I love these! They don’t fit on the 4oz mason jars though – just the bigger mason jars. If you want to use a straw you can or you can just use them as they are. If you are looking for a re-usable straw check out the Glass Dharma glass straw. If you think using a glass straw is just crazy with a toddler I totally understand that! It’s made from the same glass that Pyrex uses so it’s pretty strong. In 4 years we have had one glass straw break. Another option is 18/10 stainless steel straws. The last option is that the Lifefactory silicone straws fit perfectly too! If you don’t want a straw you can use this Eco Jarz snap lids that are stainless with a silicone snap.
What I like best and use most often:
Between the two I purchased, I personally like the Lifefactory better. It doesn’t leak at all and it hasn’t broken (even when dropped from the highchair on our hardwood floors). I don’t love the plastic lid at all but it doesn’t leak. Most often, my kids drink out of mason jars and for smoothies we always use our eco jarz lids. However, there are times when I need a sippy cup and Lifefactory is the one I choose!
I think it’s great that there are several companies out there making sippy cups that aren’t made of plastic. I was excited to find several options in my quest to find a sippy cup not made of plastic. Happy sipping to your littles ones!
Hi there — again!! Lol! I was wondering what all kinds of alternatives there were to bottles… I plan on breastfeeding, but after a while just expressing milk into a bottle so I can let family babysit. I’m worried about the nipples. Thanks!
I don’t know of any alternatives to bottles. The Lifefactory nipple is silicone (made in France). I feel that is a better alternative to plastic. Once my son was a little older I just timed my outings around nursing (and would just be home in time). That might not be an option for you though.
First and foremost- I love your blog and have been perusing it frequently the past couple of days! Thanks for taking the time to research and post your findings on all things baby and green!
I was just wondering if you could verify the material of your Lifefactory sippy cap. Their website says polypropylene #5 (pp#5) which is plastic. Is yours really silicone? Perhaps they changed it since you bought yours.
Also do you ever try to buy things not made in China? I would love to see a green baby blog/website with that info incorporated in their findings. Do you know of one? For example I believe all stainless steel drink containers (baby and adult) are made in China 🙁
So, yes, I have evolved over the past 6 months or so of not buying things from China. I think it all started with toys. I have a strict no-toys-from-China rule. It’s now also a no-cloths-from-China for my son (and use too if we can). I try and carry that through with everything we buy now unless there is something that literally is not made anywhere else – like stainless steel drink containers. So, my personal opinion is that glass is best, then stainless steel then plastic. So if my choice is stainless steel from China or plastic drink containers I choose stainless steel. I do try really, really hard to find an alternative though. For example, looking for non plastic popsicle molds I found some stainless steel molds that are made in China. It has bugged me so much that the stainless ones are from China and since this is a product I don’t need I haven’t purchased them. I just saw on another blog someone using mason jars to make popsicles – such a good idea! I’m super glad I didn’t buy any popsicle molds and that I can use jars that I already have.
So about Lifefactory…. I wrote this post awhile ago and did not realize that the cap was made from #5. How I figured it out was one day when I was drinking from my Lifefactory water bottle and saw the #5. I was really upset. My own fault for skipping over that when I bought them. I think I got confused because the baby nipple for the Lifefactory bottle is silicone so I just carried that forward and figured that they used silicone for their sippy and caps. I should have realized that wasn’t the case since the cap and sippy lid are hard. Thank you for bringing that up! I have been meaning to update my blog. Pura Kiki really doesn’t use plastic 🙂 It’s stainless so made in China. It’s hard to be put in these positions. #5 plastic is some of the safest but there are still so many studies about plastic leeching into our food and drinks. For now, I have just been using the cap on the Lifefactory bottle and keeping it upright so the water doesn’t come in contact with the lid. When we are home my son primarily drinks out of a 4 oz mason jar. We have lots of spills but he likes it (and it’s glass). Also, just so you know, the Eco Jarz mason jar lids get their stainless from Vietnam and finish them here in the US.
So, long story short, know that everything you find on my blog has a focus on not being made in China. I’ll go back through and make some updates because this is something I’ve been thinking of doing anyways. Some things are hard, if a product is certified non-toxic, like GOTS or Oeko-Tek, and there is no other option, then the certification makes me feel better (and I will buy the certification over something not certified). The one thing that comes to mind is the car seat. It’s made in China but it has the Oeko-Tek certification. I generally don’t trust anything that comes out of China but again with the certification I felt certain it was the least toxic on the market. It’s scary when you hear about the huge levels of lead in baby shoes, toys, Halloween costumes, back to school gear, etc all coming in from China. It’s definitely a focus of mine! Plus it’s nice to support people who make things in the country you live in 🙂
Thanks again for reading and posting!
Another blog I really like is http://ecofriendlyusa.wordpress.com/. We email back and forth occasionally. After I bought my EcoJarz lids I sent the link to her. She just did a review on them. She is focused on products made in the USA and does a lot of personal care products. My 1st priority is non-toxic and I always try and find that here in the US or Canada or Europe. Her blog is focused on USA 99% of the time. Anyways, I thought you might like her blog too!
Just checked out her blog- it is great! I am on information overload between the two of you! I looked into the Ecojarz and they seem like a good option. I still don’t know too much about silicone. Do you feel pretty confident in its safety? Lastly, a little random, but what toothbrush do you use for your little guy? Silicone? Plastic?
Haha, I totally know how that goes! That is part of the reason I started blogging so I could get some of it out of my head. It’s overwhelming at first but then it makes decisions at lot easier (because there are less products to buy!).
Silicone is made from a natural source – quartz / beach sand. It’s low on the toxicity scale. Some people think it great and others aren’t sure about it. I don’t use it that much so I feel like it’s fine. I don’t bake with it. I do feel that is it much better than plastic. So for baby bottle nipples, I think it’s a great alternative to plastic.
Yeah, toothbrushes are hard! At first all I used was one of his wash cloths and just rubbed his teeth. I did that for awhile. I then decided to buy a silicone toothbrush. I ordered 2 online, 1 regular looking toothbrush and 1 that went over your finger. They came and the one over my finger was made in China so I never used it. I used the other one and it worked but my son would (and still does) bite the toothbrush. At first a couple of the tips of the silicone brush were missing, then one day it was like a 1/4 of them were missing the tops. I decided that wasn’t good. He didn’t need to be eating silicone! 🙂 I was at our local co-op natural food store and ended up buying a plastic one, made in the USA, with a vegetable based nylon brush (instead of petroleum) that is dye and bpa free. The brand is Radius Pure Baby. I wish there was an alternative but I feel like it is one of those things you just have to have that is plastic. I haven’t done any more research on it but there may be better alternatives out there.
Thanks for the input! Glad it wasn’t just me having a hard time finding toothbrushes! I did find something from Jack n’ Jill that offers an option other than silicone and plastic (they have that too). It is a non-GMO cornstarch brush handle with nylon bristles. You can recycle the head and compost the handle. Not sure if that is something you would be interested in, but thought I would pass it on.
Cool – thanks! I will definitely check it out!
Hi! What are your thoughts on pumping alternatives? I have then medela free style and you have to pump into plastic bpa free plastic bottles or freeze into plastic bags. Thoughts? What about pacifiers? I am on information overload. Thought I was doing the right thing, feeling so badly finding all of this stuff out now that my baby is already 6 months old.
Pumping is tricky. I have the Medela Free Style too and decided that the milk is passing through so quick it’s fine. I started off pumping into their plastic bottles then switched to the glass Dr. Browns. It doesn’t fit perfect and I would occasionally get a few leaks down the side but I felt better about it. I never figured out the storage and I never wanted to use the plastic bags. I would freeze into Lifefactory bottles but they are expensive so I never had a ton in the freezer. If I was still pumping regularly now I would freeze them in smaller mason jars. It will take up a lot of room in the freezer but I would feel much better about it than the plastic bags.
For any future reference on your site- you can attach the Lifefactory baby bottle(4 and 9 oz) to the Medela pump in style directly so no plastic bottles needed there! You can also freeze the milk in mason jars in the freezer. More glass, less plastic!
thank you!
Awesome! Good to know.
Thank you for you blog! It is so helpful! I’m having a hard time finding regular ball 4oz mason jars. Do you recommend one brand over the other or crystal look pattern v/s regular?
Hi I’ve been searching for utensils for my toddler and my family can use. We just ordered a set from Palumba toys any other great companies you can lead me to???
Best,
Shelby
I’m confused. Is there a Pura Kiki that is okay to use? Thank you so much.
Yes, the non-insulated is fine from a lead standpoint. However, I’ve seen several people have issues with the silicone tops basically falling apart while their kids are drinking.
Has anyone actually tested the newer (non-insulated) Pura Kiki to ensure there’s no lead? I no longer trust mine!
There would be no lead needed in a non-insulated, it’s just the insulation that requires a solder of some type.