Looking for green gifts this year? Check out our Green Gear page, or have a look at the Fresh Greens blog at usnews.com that features gifts for all different recipients.
If you are incredibly interested in green issues in general, have you thought about how you feel for greener toys? How many tons of batteries do you think Americans throw away every year? 10,000 tons? 50,000 tons? Nope. Turns out we generate closer to around 150,000 tons of battery waste a year. No matter what kind of battery you’re using, that amounts to some pretty major bad news. Your children probably have more than a couple of battery powered toys. Have you ever really looked at the waste involved?
These days it seems like every toy we wrap for Christmas or a birthday needs an expensive pack of double-As. But, unsurprisingly, these little cylinders of toxic chemicals are anything but green.
And to make matters worse almost all household batteries end up in landfill, where their toxic entrails can leak out. What’s more, batteries are woefully inefficient power sources, requiring 50 times more energy to make than they generate.
If this is case in your house, this holiday season you might want to consider some of the eco-friendly toys that are on the market that’ll keep your children entertained without the waste going into landfills everyday.
Then there is the issue of the packaging of the popular toys that sit on store shelves waiting for consumers to snatch them up. Every year, the pile of debris that follows present opening seems to grow as manufacturers devise ever more elaborate boxes. The reason for all the wire ties, molded plastic, and boxes an origami master would struggle to fashion, is simple – toy makers want their products to stand out on the shelves. But with this type of packaging, neither the environment nor the consumer benefits. You have to marvel at the way toy companies have invested so much in designing packaging that’s impossible to get into. In many cases, the dimensions of packaging are 80 per cent higher than that of the toys inside. Ad the really bad part – only a tiny percentage of that waste is ever recycled.
With the holiday season here consider going green with toys this year and forget the batteries.
You can find more information for eco friendly toys: http://www.ecomall.com/biz/toys.htm
Green Gifts for Him, Her and the Kids: http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/?node=394379011&tag=
http://www.ehso.com/ehshome/batteries.php
http://earth911.org/recycling/battery-recycling/
RT