Green plastic?

lilac_lady

One of my friends is going green. She's on a mission not to use carrier bags and she's very vocal about this. At Christmas she bought her grandchildren a load (and I mean that) of plastic toys. Are children's toys made out of "green" plastic? Do you recycle everything but keep buying plastic?

miss_corerupted

not much point still buying as much and just recycling

i think the Motto is Reduce, Reuse and Recycle!!!

reducing is i think the most important

IamJen

Precisely. There's a reason that the Three R's are offered in that order. Recycling should be our "last resort".

As for the plastic toys, there are all sorts of alternatives...wooden toys or metal or cloth. You can buy second-hand items if you want something plastic too. Trying not to buy the cheap plastic crap is helpful too. If it's something sturdy that will last a long time, it's less harmful overall to the environment than something that will break in five minutes.

I could bore you with all sorts of stories about the benefits of young children being able exposed to varied textures, but I'll save that for another thread.

Ben84

Recycling alone cannot make the amount of stuff we consume sustainable. Even recycling is bad for the environment, it consumes energy and new materials. However, it generally offers a much better option than throwing something away. It helps avoid the problems with extracting new raw materials and tends to be processed in to new items with less energy than if they were made from raw materials. It also saves landfill space.

It's also increasingly popular and is getting people involved with environmental issues, so it's a generally positive thing which is good to encourage. Hopefully in time people will go further and start to think about the problem more than just recycling their rubish.

Ken68

Millions of billions are spent advertising stuff that people don't need. A good step on the way to a clean environment is to stop watching television and stop buying newspapers.
Back to basics.