Ethical & Sustainable Toys
As an eco-friendly adult you do all you can to ensure your green credentials are up to date – recycling, energy-saving light bulbs, fairtrade coffee and chocolate etc. But how about sustainable toys for the children in your life? How ethical are the toys you give to the kids? And would an ethical toy make it onto a child’s wish list in the first place? In this article we’ll discuss ethical toys and find out what makes a toy ‘green’.
The ethical toy debate
The toy industry, which is said to worth around £8 billion, has long been criticised for its lack of environmental awareness. However, that hasn’t stopped adults from splashing the cash. By the time the average British child reaches the age of 16, they will have owned around £11,000 worth of toys. It’s impossible for all those toys to have been made from sustainable materials or be ethically sound, so what’s being done to improve the situation?
The answer has, until recently, been very little. The mass market for cut-price toys lends itself to huge industrialisation leading to outsourcing and then questionable labour rights for the workforce who produce the products. Then there’s the materials used in manufacture.
The idea of the ‘toxic toybox’ has been in evidence for decades. A 1997 study into 71 toys from 17 countries found that they contained between 10 and 40 per cent of a plasticiser that is connected to childhood asthma and reproductive disorders. And the problems still exist today. As recently as 2007, around 21 million toys were recalled for posing hazards such as excessive levels of lead paint.
So, the manufacturing process is damaging to health, natural resources are being depleted and the recycling of toys that are no longer wanted is near on impossible because the materials simply can’t be reused. Will parents refuse to buy their child the latest Dalek or Transformer toy based on these revelations?
Eco-friendly toys
There’s a long way to go until the mainstream toy industry ensures all materials are sustainable and all factory workers are given fair wages and basic human rights. However, this will be the decade of the environment and consumers are waking up to the fact that things have to change.
The majority of ethical toys made from sustainable materials are wooden and while this may not appeal to the ipod generation of kids, it makes sense for the tiny tots. Sustainable toys made from sustainable hale wood or rubberwood and coloured with vegetable dyes remove the danger of potential toxic poisoning and reduce the devastation of natural resources.
Fairtrade toys produced by workers in impoverished areas give communities the chance to work for a decent wage and the profits are utilised to improve health and education.
Recycled toys manufactured from materials that have been recycled (and are recyclable when the toy is no longer wanted) reduces waste going to landfill.
These options are available to us as consumers and the more we demand them, the quicker the toy industry will change its practices.