We haven't written too much about the business lately, but I thought I'd clue you in to an issue that's affecting a lot of small business owners that create, manufacture, or even resell items that will be handled by children.
In 2008, Congress passed an extremely broad bill entitled the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), under the direction of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. This bill was written hurriedly in response to scares directly related to toy manufacturing and lead content in 2007 (many imported from China). It requires all materials being used to make children's products be tested by their end creator for lead content in both materials and paint, as well as phthalates (substances added to plastics to increase their flexibility, transparency, durability, and longevity). Sounds logical, right?
We know that regulation is necessary, but there's a few giant, hidden, unresolved issues here:
1) All certifications must be done by a third-party lab accredited by the CPSC. These labs use specific testing methods approved by our government, including gas chromatography, that requires the destruction and pulverization of said materials in order to be tested. This means you will not get your product back (and you'll need to eat the costs).
2) Because of it's sweeping conformity requirements that all materials be tested, it applies to not only people like us, but also to people making handmade things in their home. A person crafting mobiles for children's cribs, for example, needs to get every ribbon, string, metal or fabric swatch tested by these labs... not to mention those materials will be destroyed.
3) The cost of these third-party labs vary, however, it can easily run into the thousands of dollars. These costs are simply prohibitive for anyone making handmade items. Remember, the law also applies to resale, which means that (technically) the Goodwill, Salvation Army, and resale clothing stores are also required to comply.
4) The fines are massive. Up to $100,000 per incident and/or jail time.
5) The financial implications for mom-and-pop operations is absurd, but imagine what the larger manufacturers will end up doing with all of the existing inventory on their shelves if the materials used don't comply with the law? I would venture to say, in the end, most of this will end up in the landfill.
6) There are options for testing that cost much less money, one of which is XRF (X-Ray Flourescence). It's essentially a tiny X-ray gun that measures the chemical and mineral content. It does not test for phthalates, unfortunately, but does test for lead and gets most business owners moving in the right direction—for a lot less money ($5 per substrate), and does not destroy the product. You get it back, to keep it in a safe place with your test results in case anyone comes to question your conformity.
7) A lot of people are asking the same question: why aren't the makers of the original materials (i.e. the ribbon maker, the fabric manufacturer, the plastic pellet factory) required to do this up-front? There's no clear answer here, but the result is a reverse funnel, wherein making the crafters, manufacturers and retailers absorb the entire cost of testing. The case could be made that the people at the end of the chain alter these materials, and therefore are responsible for the make-up of their products, but I would also argue that much of the legwork could be done at the top of the chain. If you look at it like a funnel, all of us are required to test the same materials thousands of times, whereas the material manufacturers could do it once.
8) The really sad part of all of this is two-fold: first, there are currently no regulators, besides rogue organizations going into stores and publicly identifying "bad" products. In terms of the CPSIA laws, no one is enforcing them. Secondly, many of the third-party labs accredited by the CPSC are, guess where... China! Isn't it our problem to solve, and to regulate?
Byndoo's lucky. We are on the initial cusp of launching a product as these laws have begun to be enforced. We are also lucky to have the foresight to be making a simple product made out of one material, #5 polypropylene. We did it for reasons of easy, responsible disposal at the end of the lunchbox's life. As long as the company is aware of it's materials' chemical and elemental properties, as we are, it makes the process much easier and less expensive in the long haul.
We've had our materials tested with a local XRF facility ($25 total!), and are pleased with the results (we'll publish on our new website once it's live). We will still need to subject to destructive testing for phthalates, which will have to be done after the first products come off the assembly line in Michigan, but we should know ahead of time from the plastic specifications that there will be no phthalates present.
We're thankful that we've chosen to produce domestically... I can't imagine having to navigate all of these issues with an overseas manufacturing firm, much less finding the materials that we have chosen to use and validate.
There's surely more to come. Specific laws are being slowly rolled into the larger CPSIA, at different times over the next three years. Our hope is that Congress recognizes these smaller shops, and decides to enforce (and regulate) from the top-down, instead of making all of us absorb the costs of useless, duplicitous testing.
additional reading:
Green Mama via The Little Green People Show
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