Plastic Toys Outlast Kid’s Attention Spans by Years.

Birthdays, Special Occasions, and Holidays tend to have something in common….toys! Kids receive toys for a lot of holiday gifts. However, toys do not tend to keep children entertained for very long. Sometimes toys only last a couple of days before a kid will lose complete interest in them. Now, when that toy is made of plastic, that means that the plastic material will outlive the couple hours of entertainment and fun provided. Hard plastics like the ones that make up a lot of toys take a lot longer to decompose since it requires a lot of UV light to begin breaking down. This leads to an estimate of about 450 years to decompose in a landfill. 

 

Take a look at this satire article from The Onion:

“Playing with the brand-new toy he received Wednesday, local 4-year-old Alex Strickland was entertained for five minutes by a plastic truck that will not biodegrade for another 10 centuries, sources confirmed. “Vroooom!” Strickland said before growing bored and tossing aside the toy that contains 11 separate plastic parts, each of which will outlive everyone on earth by dozens of generations. “I want to play something else now. Where are my Transformers?” At press time, sources confirmed that Strickland was enjoying Kool-Aid from a styrofoam cup that will outlast the toy by another million years.” (https://www.theonion.com/child-entertained-for-5-minutes-by-plastic-toy-that-wil-1819576584)

 

Jessica Harris studied the plastic toy market while taking her Circular Economy class this past year. Her group decided to try and come up with a solution to the plastic toy industry since it is so harmful to the environment. Watch the video here!

 

Have you thought about how wasteful plastic toys are to the environment? If you have children in your life (children of your own, nieces, nephews, cousins, neighbors, etc…) look around their toy bin/rooms and look at how much of their toys contain plastic. The next time an occasion that calls for gifts comes around, shop for plastic-free toys or experiences to help lessen the waste on the environment! 

 

Photo from https://www.futurelandfill.org/ – FUTURE LANDFILL is a collection of cultural agitators headed up and created by advertising executive Alex Wadelton and television executive Tom Whitty. Cheap collectible plastic toy promotions must stop. It’s wasteful, manipulative, and specifically targeted at children. These toys are #futurelandfill