Giving a child a new toy can be as exciting to the adult as it is to the child – but the pleasure can quickly wane, and cast-aside playthings can cause headaches when it comes to knowing what to do with them (and their packaging).

Despite the UK toy market being the biggest in Europe (worth £2.9 billion in 2011, according to retail tracking group NPD), it is surprisingly difficult to dispose of toys in a sustainable manner in this country.

Indeed, according to RecycleNow, there is almost nowhere to recycle toys, as neither household waste recycling centres nor kerbside schemes accept them. The crux of the problem, Natasha Crookes, Director of Communications at The British Toy & Hobby Association (BTHA) tells me, is finding a balance between making safe toys, and making sustainable ones.

“The biggest obstacle for the toy industry in being green is making toys that are primarily safe to use, but also sustainable. Children are vulnerable consumers, so we need to make toys that are durable, that aren’t easy to take apart, but that makes them difficult to disassemble and recycle at their end of life.

“Take electronic toys – it is vital that children cannot access the electrical parts of toys such as tablets or toy robots – so they have to be tightly sealed away. You have to make sure they are durable and inaccessible but also need to consider if they can be taken apart easily enough to be recycled [manufacturers of such products have to pay into WEEE compliance schemes]... it’s not an easy balance.”

Indeed, electronic tablets are fast becoming one of the most popular toys to give to a child – according to research by NPD for the International Council of Toy Industries, approximately 250,000 ‘toy’ tablets were sold in the UK in 2011, with sales of preschool ‘electronic learning’ toys rising by 43 per cent. Further, one in every 11 UK children aged between three and six received a toy tablet for Christmas that year.

But with preschoolers learning and growing so quickly, this type of toy has a relatively short play-value (under five years), and not being able to recycle them easily makes the toy tablet one of the most wasteful toys out there.

Though figures on the average energy and resource use of toy tablets are still unavailable, it can be estimated that they use similar amounts of resources and carbon to tablets of similar weights, such as the iPad2. Apple estimates its second-generation tablet produces 130 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide emissions throughout its lifecycle – approximately 216 times its weight. Add to this the energy-intensive exploitation of metals and rare earth minerals needed to manufacture tablets (and the huge amounts of energy and water to produce them, which again amount to many times the products’ weights), and the end result is far from sustainable.

But making the toy industry more sustainable is easier said than done, says Crookes. Toys are some of the most closely monitored consumer goods on the market, and under the Toy Safety Directive, there is a limited range of material that the toy industry can use. For example, manufacturers are required to use virgin (rather than recycled) plastics in their products, so that they know the exact chemical composition and provenance of the material and can ensure that it’s safe for children: “There can’t be any chemicals migrating out of the plastics which can happen in recycled plastics. So currently, the only way of knowing exactly what the plastic
is made up of is by using virgin plastic.”

But Crookes concedes that toy manufacturers could design toys with sustainability in mind: “We have a carbon calculator that members can use to see how much carbon their toys are producing. We realise that carbon isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all for sustainability, but the idea is that by measuring it, our members can see an aggregate value of the design points of a toy and look at what the hot spots are. That way, they can understand what the implications are of using different, greener materials at the toy’s end of life. Eco-design in toys can make a big difference.”

When I ask Crookes what can be done to help make toys such as electronic tablets more easily recyclable, she acknowledges that there is no easy answer: “Safety is the absolute priority, so although toy manufacturers and toy packaging companies take the environmental issue seriously, all of those have to come secondary to making safe toys.

“Until there are easier ways to take toys apart whilst ensuring they are durable, the main end-of-life stream for toys will be reuse, not recycling.”

Indeed, reuse is currently the most popular method of getting rid of toys. According to BTHA research: 70 per cent of parents pass toys on when their children finish with them; 62 per cent give them to friends and family; 39 per cent send them to charity; and 31 per cent keep them for future use. Further, 60 per cent say their children have received handed-down toys, and 45 per cent who receive a toy will hand it on again.

“There’s quite a long process of handing-on toys. We all know that children grow out of toys even when they can continue to be used, so the important thing is making sure that they don’t go into waste, into landfill, when they are still usable. We are working to ensure that people continue the life of toys when there is still play-value in them, and we work with Bernardos charity who accept secondhand toys”, Crookes says.

However, she notes that more could be done to promote reuse, adding that local authorities could help by telling parents where to send unwanted toys for reuse: “Where I live, we get a newsletter from the local authority that tells us how to deal with various wastes at peak times, so things like that could be used to remind people that they don’t need to throw good-condition toys away.

“We know from our research that parents tend to have a big sort out in September/October time as kids go back to school – as there’s a bit of free time to have a clear out before Christmas comes along – and it’s vital that we work together to come up with easy ways of identifying where they can take those unwanted toys without them going into waste.”

Packaging

Aside from toys themselves, packaging, and the frequent ‘overpackaging’ of toys, is another area that many people find frustratingly unsustainable.

According to WRAP, 35,000 tonnes of toy packaging are produced each year, making up just 0.7 per cent of the UK’s six million tonnes of retail packaging.

“Toy packaging needs to be put into perspective... it’s easy to point fingers, but toy packaging only makes up 0.7 per cent of retail packaging”, says Crookes. “There are some restrictions on packaging, and again, our priority is that toys arrive with children in a safe way, and as they were meant to... As the end user is a child, you can’t have toys that have broken off into small parts, nor can there be any sharp edges, or choking hazards, et cetera.”

However, Ian Bates, Client Services Director at packaging optimisation consultancy Less Packaging, says toys’ packaging isn’t just about protection, but also about making them visually arresting: “Toys are often overpackaged to make them seem more valuable than they really are and to stop little fingers removing the contents. Making toys in China and other Far Eastern countries has also driven toy packaging to a place where it is over-protective and held in place to stop product movement in transit.”

Bates adds that consumers should apply more pressure to manufacturers by complaining of overpackaging to the Trading Standards Institute: “If a complaint is lodged, the supplier must explain themselves and demonstrate why their packaging is so wasteful”, he says. “Too many toys are in packaging which is difficult to open, remove the product safely and then recycle the waste easily. Apart from often being over-sized or even super-sized, toy packaging is usually between 25 and 100 per cent bigger than it needs to be... It’s all about perceived value and the visual impact in store.

“Add to this the overuse of plastic mouldings, twisty ties, metal screws, et cetera, and we end up with a recipe for disaster on several fronts including frustration, costs and environmental damage.”

Indeed, the Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations allow manufacturers to legally ‘overpackage’. Though the law says that packaging should be restricted to ‘the minimum to maintain necessary levels of safety, hygiene and acceptance’, there is a clause allowing extra packaging where it has ‘consumer acceptance’, or is needed for ‘stimulating purchase’.

It was this loophole that Caroline Spelman (Environment Minister 2010-12), tried to crack down on. Speaking to the Independent in 2010, Spelman said that toy companies were exploiting the aesthetic appeal of toys by using an excessive amount of packaging: “My teenage children are constantly bringing items home in thick packaging, polystyrene and cardboard, and it’s really all about making the product attractive to buy rather than packaging it safely.

“If you go into an average toy shop and look how children’s toys are packaged, that’s very much about marketing – attractive boxes, large boxes, filled with usually fairly large quantities of packing materials before you get to the goodies at the heart of it.”

Spelman said that she intended to crack down on excessive toy packaging by extending WRAP’s Courtauld Commitment – a voluntary agreement to reduce waste in the retail and manufacturing industries – to toys and other sectors of the leisure and entertainment industries.

When contacted by Resource, a WRAP spokesperson said that though plans to include the toy industry in the Courtauld agreement were not imminent, WRAP will be releasing a report into toy packaging in ‘autumn 2013’.

The spokesperson added: “Consumers are concerned about packaging, including on gifts, and therefore it clearly needs addressing. On toys, WRAP has worked with the British Toy & Hobby Association to investigate packaging usage and making it easy for consumers to recycle as much toy and seasonal packaging as possible...

“The BTHA estimates that almost 90 per cent of toy packaging is suitable for kerbside recycling programmes.”

However, extending Courtauld to toys would have its barriers, says Crookes: “When we had discussions with WRAP in the past, we found that setting targets for the toy industry would be particularly difficult, because of the difference in toys from one year to the next. We don’t necessarily need to have a commitment because members are [improving] on their own... but we would always be open to discussions.”

According to the BTHA, 89 per cent of toy packaging is made up of recyclable paper and board, with around 80 per cent of that currently being recycled – but toy manufacturers are slowly increasing that rate by aiming for 100 per cent recyclable packaging. Hasbro, for instance, has moved from using wire ties for holding toys in place, to paper raffia ties, which can be recycled.

Less Packaging says that manufacturers should still be taking ‘packaging optimisation’ seriously, though. “Packaging manufacturers are good at making packaging, but not necessarily designing it in the best interests of the retailer, brand owner, consumer or planet for that matter. ‘Design for manufacture’ has nothing to do with design optimisation. Overpackaging is the safe option for product suppliers and naturally ensures minimal costly product returns”, says Bates.

“Manufacturers should take packaging optimisation seriously because it makes good business sense. They could perhaps collaborate with their retail customers and competitors to work together to remove overpackaging so that the category starts to behave in a more responsible manner. This is long overdue.”

Indeed, Less Packaging has helped Tesco ‘optimise’ its Carousel range of pre-school toys. Led by founding partner of Less Packaging, Greg Lawson, the company worked with Tesco to ensure packaging was 100 per cent recyclable and designed and produced ‘right first time’ by apply a ‘pre-cycling’ design ethos – that is, considering product and packaging environmentally and commercially from ‘cradle to cradle’. The Carousel range turned to cardboard-only packaging, lightweighting by 15 per cent and ‘designing out’ other waste such as plastic ties and windows. Further, the ‘unpacking’ time was reduced to below 45 seconds – down from the average time of four minutes.

“This is not an industry that stands still, there is work going on the industry”, Crookes concludes, adding: “We know that we have more to do.”