Looking for Green Toys In All the Wrong Places

by Daniel Sean Kaye

The assignment sounded easy enough: Go around to area stores to find “green toys” and check them out, seeing if they were of good quality and fun to play with. Figuring that eco-friendly and “green” are popular trends now, (I think even dust is now being marketed as “organic, naturally occurring particle balls”), I guessed I’d be inundated with items proclaiming to be “good for the Earth” and “pollutant-free.” I even wondered how I’d be able to narrow it down in just one article, choosing only the best, most interesting I could find.

Many hours and four major retailers later, I had found only one small toy line of such products, tucked onto a slim shelf at Toys “R” Us.

One. Seriously, one. It is the Earth-friendly toy line at Toys “R” Us. The toys are packaged with no less than 70 percent recycled material, using eco-friendly inks, made out of “forest-friendly sources” or 100 percent all-natural cotton and non-toxic inks and dyes. These plush animals and wood toys are simple and very sweet. I think young children would like them and they seem durable. They have the look of “classic” toys our grandparents might have had. I should also mention that I did find some eco-friendly baby items from Seventh Generation [Can Daniel contact these companies and ask if they would be interested in having their name in this article be a link to their website?] , such as laundry detergent, baby wipes, and diapers, all displayed prominently at several retailers.

It’s a shame gasoline is so expensive, because in the days that followed I spent so much time driving from store to store trying to find something, anything, to add to the story. Target, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Sears, Becker’s Parent/Teacher store, independent toy stores, various dollar stores – nothing, nada, zip.

After all the missteps of the worldwide toy industry last year, you’d think you’d find plenty of alternatives to the children’s items that so stoked the fears of the vast American public. Even salespeople at the stores I visited were similarly dumbfounded, shrugging when I asked why more toy manufacturers weren’t making ecologically sensitive toys. More than once, they told me, “Well, maybe you can find some stuff Online.” I did find that items made by toy creator Melissa & Doug did include the line, “Exceeds toy safety testing,” which was nice to see but not entirely relevant to my quest.

Setting aside for a moment the lack of “green” toys there is one main ecological aspect I did find again and again – and an ironic one at that: subject matter. Everything for babies seems to have an animal on it (specifically endangered ones) or something about loving Earth, even though none seem to have anything specific to do with being ecologically sound. There are also a seemingly endless amount of toys that celebrate and investigate nature, including many items from EDUScience, Animal Planet, Cranium (their “Bloom” series), Rescue Pets Just Born, Little Tree, and Backyard Safari. These toys talk about animals, pollution, recycling, and other environment related subjects, introducing many of these topics into the mainstream toy world. It’s nice to see this focus and the use of toys as educational opportunities, but I had to wonder; is this their way of tapping into the “green” market without actually being “green” at all?

If many of these items do make an attempt to be “green,” perhaps it is only in packaging. Most have the recyclable symbol and some actually ask the buyer to make sure he or she recycles the item’s packaging. I did note, however, few products had labeling indicating that the packaging was made from any percentage of recycled material.

This is not to say that toys that don’t tout themselves as “kind to the Earth” are bad. Maybe they’re not directly beneficial – most are made from hard plastics, and that doesn’t exactly equate with “Mother Nature” – but it also doesn’t mean they are more awful or dangerous than any other product you might buy. Most of the toys are innocuous, a little problematic only because they’re inexpensive and will probably end up in landfills, but not necessarily dangerous.

As the salespeople mentioned, the real place to find “green” toys still seems to be the Internet, with dozens of Web sites selling products that have been created using what they say is the safest of manufacturing processes and the gentlest of environmental strategies. Most of these are independent toy manufacturers, small “Mom and Pop” sites or artists that believe strongly in the need for products made safely and kindly. Some items from these sites will be reviewed in my next article on SafeToys.com.

There’s no way of knowing if “green” items will really become a large market segment. Likely, the small companies that have been producing organic and environmentally-sound toys will continue to thrive only as a niche in the mass toy market, and perhaps this is why major retailers don’t stock the items. Mainstream manufacturing is all about low cost and ease of processes so, unless someone shows them a different, money-making path, the mainstream toy companies are unlikely to invest heavily in this area. But if the toy-buying public keeps asking the questions I asked, and starts buying more of these items from Online sites, maybe retailers will consider introducing more “green” toys to their shelves and we, the toy-buying public will see some real change from the industry.