Toys are great …
It’s easy to think well of toys. They’re fun, they bring kids together in play with friends and family members, they can help kids learn valuable lessons about sharing and kindness, they can inspire soaring flights of imaginative fancy, and they can send parents and grandparents on long trips down nostalgia lane in no time flat.
… except when they’re not
One really bad thing about toys, though: they’re terrible for the environment. The toy industry is a huge market, generating over $28 billion in the U.S. for 2021. And over 90 percent of this market takes the form of toys made out of plastic. Overall, less than 10 percent of consumer plastics get recycled, and with toys, the figure is even lower. It is rare to find recycling codes stamped into plastic used to make toys, and the mixture of metal and plastic that goes into many toys makes them non-recyclable to start with.
It gets worse. As any parent of young children knows, toys have short lifespans. Kids grow tired of toys, grow out of toys, or break toys faster than most parents can keep up with. So into the trash they go, often not long after the mostly plastic packaging gets similarly disposed of, destined for the landfill or the incinerator. And one thing plastic, even cheap plastic, is good at is persisting. Even after a toy is not wanted as a toy, it will linger in the ground or in water as plastic, an environmental hazard with an extremely long half-life.
It gets better
Toy companies, to their credit, have stepped up their environmentalism game in recent years. The big three – Hasbro, Mattel, and LEGO – have all made strides in switching to eco-friendly packaging and manufacturing practices. Increasingly, they are using sustainable forms of plastics and even returning to older practices of using organic materials to make toys. Fisher-Price has produced, for example, a version of their iconic Rock-a-Stack ring pyramid made out of plant-based plastics.
The engineering angle
And toys with educational content related to environmental awareness have proliferated. Renewable energy sources, recycling, eco-friendly design and building – these and many other themes show up across a range of toys so wide that no age or taste for play is left out. Moreover, play with many of these toys comes with learning experiences related to the imagine/build/improve ethos of engineering design.
Read on for many ways to make play-time both fun for the kids you love and good for the environment at the same time. These toys are made by companies who use sustainable manufacturing techniques, combine play with environmentally conscious learning content, or offer some combination of both.
Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack Baby Toy: Classic ring toy, now made from plant-based materials in eco-friendly packaging. Ages 6 months – 2 years.
Mega Bloks Green Town: Building blocks, formed animal figures, and other special pieces, all made of recyclable plastic. Ages 12 months and up.
Vtech Sort and Recycle Ride-On Truck: Made from 90% reclaimed plastic, this truck makes recycling a fun, familiar playtime activity. Ages 18 months – 3 years.
HABA 3d Arranging Game Creative Stones: Template cards describe design challenges at three levels of difficulty for kids to meet, using the geometrically shaped wooden building blocks. Ages 2 – 10 years.
Kapla Challenge Building Game: Wooden planks plus challenge cards test inventiveness and design skills. Ages 2 and up.
PlanToys Wooden Balancing Tree: Learn about weights, counterweights, and building techniques. Ages 3 and up.
Hape Math Monster Scale Toy: Weighted stones of many different sizes help teach addition, balance, and physics, all at the same time. Ages 3 and up.
Clixo Flexible Magnetic Building Toy: Durable, bendable toy pieces can be formed into countless forms: animals, airplanes, rockets, flowers, and much more. Ages 3 and up.
Make-a-Fort Building Kit: Large, colorful sheets of rugged cardboard provide endless building opportunities for kids to explore. Ages 4 and up.
Thames & Kosmos Wind Power Experiment Kit: Build your own wind turbine and then test and improve to maximize efficiency and power delivery. Ages 8 and up.
OWI Solar Robot Transformer: Solar power makes this transformer toy go, in four different forms: robot, insect, dinosaur, and driller. Ages 8 and up.
Fischertechnik Fuel Cell Car Construction Kit: Design and build a futuristic car powered by electrolysis, the division of distilled water into oxygen and hydrogen. Kids see hydrogen fuel cells working in real life. Ages 9 and up.
And, finally
If you can’t find the perfect gift for the STEM kid in your life here, check out the Toy Lists we’ve published in previous years for more great gift ideas:
We are providing links to these products in our capacity as an Amazon Affiliate, and as such, we might earn commissions on qualifying purchases made through these links.
Eric Iversen is VP for Learning and Communications at Start Engineering. He has written and spoken widely on STEM education and related careers. You can write to him about this topic, especially when he gets stuff wrong, at eiversen@start-engineering.com.
You can also follow along on Twitter @StartEnginNow.
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