They recently just settled a children’s clothing case in Wisconsin again. Every year I see stores importing clothes from China that don’t conform to Wisconsin law on the presence of drawstrings. I wouldn’t buy a child’s toy from China. They end up with lead contamination to often, be it paint or in the metal.
My niece had some hair clips in her hair, that i removed once I noticed them. They were punched metal about half an inch square. They’re China imports that don’t met choking hazard rules in the USA. This was made for babies to wear. I noticed them, because I saw one on the floor, that fell out. I’m glad she didn’t swallow it. Everything in reach she sees goes into her mouth right now.
If there was a country that made all of the hundreds of thousands of products that China does, and paid their employees a living wage, and had strict safety and health guidelines, you’d end up paying 20 bucks for a tube of toothpaste- who wants that? Affordibility comes with risks.
Wow. So as long as you get cheap toothpaste, you’re willing to not only run the risk of maybe dying, but you’re also happy with people who are working in abyssmal and unsafe conditions, for wages that they can’t survive on? Nice.
I buy Tom’s of Maine toothpaste for $5 a tube. It’s made in Maine.
NOt to mention that the “everything on earth is made in China” thing is a recent phenomenom. Yet we managed to brush our teeth, feed our pets, and buy loads of stupid plastic junk just fine in the 70’s.
Maybe toothpaste was a bad example. How about, how much would strawberries cost per quart if the were picked by a person in a union making 17 bucks an hour? Not saying it right or wrong, jus’ sayin.
Okay…let’s do strawberries. I just bought two baskets of locally grown strawberries for $6. I could do this all day.
For the vast majority of the people in the U.S., the only reason we “need” rockbottom prices on all the little geegaws we buy is so that we can afford more and more and more little geegaws to fill up our enormous houses. IMHO. For most people, it’s not hard to afford to buy ethically…as long as you don’t confuse need with luxury.
That would be a little challenging. It’s not all Chinese products and I’m sure a lot of it is inadvertent. It costs $$ to monitor. I have friends that do promo items for fast food joints (eg, cheap toys that comes in the kids special meals, etc), and it costs them $10,000 for an independant lab to run the tests that certify no lead paint was used. That can really bite into profits for a small company.
I’m sure at high enough levels of the Chinese government, this is their worst nightmare. Each quality or should I write kwality headline means a devaluation of the “chinese brand.” It costs millions or more in lost orders each time it happens.
My wife prefers foreign manufactured toothpaste even before this scandal. I had to make sure I bought made in thailand toothpaste a few months ago. I’m sure I’ve been exposed to hazardous stuff over the past 20 years. Dunno what I can do about it except move out of China and then boycott Chinese goods, which isn’t really a practical solution.
One of my roomie works for Sheffield Labs [they invented toothpaste in tubes from what I understand] and they produce toothpaste for all sorts of companies [they custom run batches and label them] for companies like Tom’s of Maine, and even a house brand of toothpaste under their own label and for teh most part the brands they make are in the normal range of cost.
[of course we get all sorts of free tubes of the stuff, from test batch runs or overruns. We rarely know what toothpaste we will be using next time the tube is empty. The company keeps a big bin of stuff for the employees to bring home]
I should have replied to this one … nope., made in lovely festive New Londong CT at Sheffield Labs, we get it occasionally when Dragon brings home freebie toothpaste=)
I foresee food safety becoming a huge issue in the near future due to China’s lax standards.
In our household we’ve been cooking our own dog food for the past months, because these companies obviously can’t be trusted. I wonder how different the dog food supply chain is from the human food supply chain.
Hopefully we’ll see some stronger oversight from the US Govt.
The market will also respond. It won’t take more than one high-profile incident before “No Chinese Ingredients” becomes a powerful marketing tool for somebody like McDonalds.
I’m avoiding Chinese produced food items whenever I can, but other Chinese made goods I’m not really sweating it. I’d like to buy goods produced in the US or other developed nations where I know the employees are paid a decent wage and have decent living conditions, but that’s simply not possible in many cases.
I hate to have to say this for the people saying they want stuff from a country paying decent wages high enough to provide shelter and food. Minimum wage jobs don’t do that in the USA. Try it I dare you.
I don’t really think this is a true boycott, for the sake of making a political statement. I think most people who have recently decided not to buy things made in China are doing it to protect themselves against serious illness or death. It seems that there are four categories of people who don’t buy Chinese goods: 1) People who only buy domestically-made goods in order to preserve jobs for their fellow citizens 2) People who only buy fair trade and don’t approve of China’s (or India’s, etc.) work conditions 3) People who buy locally in order to lessen gas consumption 4) People who prefer not to have toothpaste, tires, toys, seafood, pet food, etc., etc., etc. (and the list is getting longer) that will potentially kill them, their families, and their pets.
I think we have a smattering of types in this thread, but it was started by someone who is mainly concerned about the potential dangers of Chinese products, so this really has nothing to do with a “quaint” boycott (although I personally try not to give my money to companies with whom I have serious ethical complaints and I think that’s a reasonable stance to take).
But this thread is about trying to find Americanmade products when none are available. I, personally, would buy American if I had a choice and remembered, but often I don’t, and I don’t feel like taking 1 1/2 hours or more to find a place that sells my $10 gadget for $15 but it’s American.
Is that what this thread is about? I thought it was about how to avoid buying products made in China.
You’re correct in that sometimes there aren’t products readily available at your local big-chain store that are both a) made somewhere besides China and b) affordable. You still have several choices: you can either go somewhere else and look or you can do without. The mindset that if it’s not convenient and super-cheap, it’s out of the question, is IMO one that needs some examination. I can’t really see how you can say you’d prefer to spend your money in a certain way, then throw up your hands in frustration when you’re confronted with a slight amount of inconvenience.