The lovely and superfantastic Mindy asks:

I’ve been knocking around the Internet over the past week or so, trying to find information about recycling car seats.  I found that the two seats left from my older kids were on the cusp of expiration. I registered for a new one, but was stuck wondering if I had to pitch the old ones into a landfill.  I would much rather do something less environmentally destructive with them, if possible.

If the car seat doesn’t have a recycling symbol on it, the best directions I received were to strip them of their straps and padding, then chop them up and throw them in the regular trash.  (The more destroyed they are, the better, in order to prevent Dumpster divers from reusing an unsafe seat.)  Really?  There’s nothing better than that, considering the number of car seats which expire or are involved in crashes every year?

Does anyone at Teeny Manolo know anything to do? 

An excellent question, Mindy! It practically boggles the mind to think of how many car seats are out there. They are so big and bulky, it seems like it wouldn’t take all that many of them to pile up to the top of a landfill in no time flat. There has to be something that can be done with them, right?

Well, sort of.

Because all child car seats have an expiration date, like those eggs you just bought, the options are fairly limited. It irritates me to think that something that looks perfectly functional is not, but we have to take the word of the manufacturers that over time, the plastics and materials in the car seats degrade. We have Space Shuttles making multiple trips into outer space and back, but can’t seem to make a car seat that works past six years. OK, a little side rant there.  Back to the question at hand.

How can we dispose of our expired car seat and still give ourselves the environmental warm fuzzies?

To find out the answer…

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