Oct 12 2010
ReliaBrand®, a newly formed consumer brand company committed exclusively to creating and marketing safer consumer plastic products, launched at the ABC Kid’s Expo venue today in Las Vegas, Nevada by announcing its partnership with PlastiPure™, a safer-plastics technology company.
The partnership will result in the ongoing development of infant feeding, sports bottle, food packaging, and medical products free of harmful chemicals that cause estrogenic activity (EA). A series of new baby bottles, sport bottles, food storage containers and flexible cling wrap and bags manufactured and marketed under the Adiri®, ReliaDose™, ReliaWare™, ReliaWrap™ and WaterGeeks™ brand names will be the first to be certified free of estrogenic activity (EA) and will launch to retailers throughout 2011.
Chemicals such as BPA and phthalates that are known to exhibit estrogenic activity (EA) have been widely publicised because of their strong link to adverse health effects such as birth defects, reproductive cancers, and behavioral and learning disorders. However, BPA and phthalates are only a few of thousands of chemicals that may be used in creating plastic products that are suspected to have estrogenic activity (EA) with similar hormone-disrupting potential. For example, PlastiPure’s testing of fifteen premium-brand BPA-free baby bottles found that all tested positive for EA, with eight leaching chemicals with EA measuring at or above the EA of BPA-containing polycarbonate. In other words, ‘BPA-free’ is no guarantee to consumers that the product is free of the potential hormone-disrupting estrogenic activity (EA) chemicals they are seeking to avoid.
PlastiPure™, supported by grants from the National Institute of Environmental Health and Safety (NIEHS), a division of the NIH, and from the National Science Foundation (NSF), has been working for ten years to develop new, reliable and highly sensitive methods to both detect and help eliminate estrogenic activity (EA) chemicals in plastic products. These proprietary technologies for detecting and eliminating EA using the most sensitive and reliable methods available will be employed in developing and certifying all ReliaBrand® products to be “PlastiPure Safe™” EA-Free.
ReliaBrand® President Brent Meikle has been educating and empowering consumers to enable them to make healthier choices for both themselves and the environment since 2007. As Executive Producer of the award winning documentary ‘FLOW: For Love Of Water,' he was among the first to document the global phenomena of male fish actually “changing sex” due to the harmful effect of EA chemicals leaching into the environment.
After founding WaterGeeks™ in 2007, a company that makes filtered sport bottles to empower consumers to reduce their dependence on traditional bottled water, Meikle was able to attract like minded partners and investors to help acquire innovative product lines such as Adiri® with the specific goal of creating a new food and beverage container company dedicated exclusively to producing EA-Free products. “Today is truly a dream come true for me,” Meikle said.
“I have great partners and executives such as Chris Kutschera to run Adiri® while I am able to work directly with PlastiPure™ and other partners in developing the first EA-Free cling wrap, storage baggies and food storage containers that are both EA-Free and biodegradable that we will market in 2011 under the ReliaWrap™ and ReliaWare™ brand names. We are just getting started but I believe our success will be through aiming at the hearts of today’s consumers.”
“In a world where too many of the Goliaths have hardly changed at all so that consumers no longer trust plastic products, we represent a break from the past and a step into the future,” Meikle added. Who else would buy Adiri®, the most highly awarded baby bottle in history, only to voluntarily pull it off the market and forsake sales until we can make it even safer? The answer is only a company that cares more about babies than dollars and I believe moms will respond to the value we place on the safe development of their children.”
Debuting at the ABC Kid’s Expo today is the first certified PlastiPure-Safe™ EA-Free Sports bottle under the WaterGeeks™ brand name. Chris Kutschera, Adiri® CEO, will be announcing today the 2011 product launch of the new Adiri® certified PlastiPure-Safe™ EA-Free baby bottle while other key executives will be announcing similar strategic launches of the ReliaBrand® family of products that will occur throughout 2011. Mike Usey, PlastiPure™ CEO, will also be on hand to help educate retailers and the media in attendance regarding the importance of detecting and eliminating estrogenic activity (EA). The ABC Kid’s Expo is the primary annual trade show for the juvenile products industry.
Source: http://www.reliabrand.com/