So you are on your quest to find BPA-free sippies, bottles, pacifiers and feeding tools, but once at the store, you are overwhelmed with options and completely forget which items are safe from what company. Z Recommends has come to the rescue with a wonderful service. Just send them a text from your mobile phone and they will send you a report! Genius! Best part is that it is free (aside from your standard texting fees).
Read more about how to use this service on Z Rec’s website.
Here is how the service works:
How It Works
Text “zrecs” plus a company name and/or a product category to 69866. You’ll get a text back (or occasionally two) providing the BPA status of products by that company and/or in that category. Current categories are bottles, sippys, pacifiers, and tableware.
Requirements: Every request sent to this service requires the first word to be “zrecs” to access our BPA database, and must be sent to the number 69866.
Charges/Access fees: This service is currently offered free of any charge except whatever it costs you to send and receive text messages (based on your cell phone plan). This free service is made possible by a partnership between Z Recommends and Mobile Commons, a company that designs and serves mobile applications. We’ll invite you to contribute to this project at the foot of this post.
Here are some specific ways you can access our BPA info through this service.
Check all of one company’s products: Text “zrecs” and then the company name. Example: “zrecs boon” returns, at the time of this writing:
Reported BPA-Free: Fluid, Benders, Modware, Catch Bowl, Groovy, Snack Ball. W/BPA: Squirt. More at zrecs.com | StdOthrChrgsMayApply. Powered by mCommons
Product category status and recommendations: For this text service products are covered in the following categories:
bottles
sippys
pacifiers
tableware
You can check on a company’s products in a particular category by texting “zrecs” + company name + category (no plusses!). Example: “zrecs avent pacifiers” returns, at the time of this writing:
All current Avent pacifiers have BPA. Alternatives: txt pacifier. More at zrecs.com | StdOthrChrgsMayApply. Powered by mCommons
Whenever we find a company’s BPA-free offerings in a product area lacking, we’ll point you to the alternative: requesting info for the product category overall. In the above case, we wanted to remind you that you can text “zrecs pacifiers,” which will return:
BPA-Free pacifiers: all First Years+Playtex, some Evenflo (txt company name + pacifier for specs). More at zrecs.com | StdOthrChrgsMayApply. Powered by mCommons
As we add new companies to the Z Report, you’ll see more companies’ products popping up in some of these categories. We have very few listings that run into two messages, and if we run out of space we are more likely to drop companies which are unlikely to be seen in brick-and-mortar stores; when you’re shopping online, just check the Z Report.
Get general recommendations or info: There are a few other texts you can send.
- zrecs BPAFree: Basic instructions for checking on companies, plus a list of recommended BPA-Free companies from the Z Report.
- zrecs info: Reminds you that we canvassed companies, rather than lab-testing, to get the information in our report.
- zrecs disclaimer: We do our best, all the time.
Related Articles:
Natural families and lifestyle 
The history of BPA tells us that its original use was that of an artifical estrogen, developed when information on the adverse effects of artifical estrogen was in its infancy. It appears that since BPA failed miserably as an artifical estrogen replacement, that it was then marketed and used in the manufacture of plastic resins. Well, this is another way to consume this artifical estrogen. The plastics indsutry SPI code – the recycle triangle at the bottom of plastic containers;designated the number 7 and the letter code OTHER to plastics using BPA. Also note that plastics not containing BPA, including the new types of naturally derived plastics can also be coded with the number 7.