Big Interview
to exchange unwanted textiles and small electricals to get science equipment. Working in partnership with UN
Environment for 2018 UN World Environment Day, Wastebuster worked with Dow, RECOUP, Plastics Europe and the BPF to produce the global benchmark educator’s information pack on plastics and launched a film on plastics ‘Litter Things Matter’ viewed by 1.3 million students in schools on the day. Wastebuster have acted as circular economy education consultants internationally, delivering circular economy education and school engagement programmes in South Africa and the Middle East, to support the development of new recycling infrastructure for hard to recycle plastics. Which led Wastebuster to be instrumental in the formation of EPPIC (Extended Plastics Partnership for Innovation in Circularity) alongside DOW, Marks and Spencer and Ecosurety. Currently, Wastebuster is leading the workstream on hard to recycle toy plastics, which has led to the formation of the Recycle to Read campaign, in association with Products of Change. For the Recycle to Read Campaign,
Wastebuster is working with Products of Change to bring together cross-sector stakeholders (toy companies, brand, owners, publishers, government) to develop an efficient, environmental, and sustainable infrastructure for recycling plastic toys (via collections in schools/ community groups, shops, and council recycling centres), initially in the UK.
How is Recycle to Read the solution for a sustainable future in toy production? Firstly, the Recycle to Read campaign promotes reuse of toys before recycling, encouraging children and families to swap or donate working toys, and only seek to recycle end-of-life toys.
Schools (and other community groups) participating in the Recycle to Read campaign have access to free assembly/
The toy agenda for Wastebuster:
n A member base with multi-national toy industry representatives
n Creation of a sustainable UK-infrastructure for toy recycling in the UK (Recycle to Read)
n To have ensured all schools in the UK have a school library (as provided by Recycle to Read)
n Replication of the Recycle to Read toy take back model in the US and Asia
event presentations and videos to introduce and engage children in toy reuse. They also have access to curriculum linked lesson plans that allow toy swaps and donation drives to be used to support the curriculum. After covering reuse, the campaign
seeks to address barriers to recycling toys. Currently in the UK, consumers have limited opportunity to recycle plastic toys, as they are not accepted for recycling in kerbside and recycling banks on the street along with the packaging we all have to recycle regularly.
Due to these services’ current focus and optimisation for packaging recycling, their logistics and recycling systems are not capable of transporting, sorting and recycling plastic toys. Due mainly to the use of more than one type of plastic, the inclusion of non-plastic components within a single toy (unlike most recycled packaging) and the shape size of some toys, but also in part due to legislation for extended producer responsibility (e.g. recycling and recycled content targets) currently targeting packaging but not toys and other consumer products. Although a few council recycling centres (HWRCs/HRRCs) may recycle larger toys like ride-on and garden toys like slides, with other large hard/rigid plastics like plastic garden furniture, the majority of toys will currently be sent to landfill or waste to energy (where there are concerns around risks related to burning plastic). To address these
technical issues, the Recycle to Read
programme brings together partners from across the life cycle to toys and supporters of child and family
environmental education and activism, to: Identify and test new leading- edge technology capable of
processing hard/rigid plastic toys (as well as other hard plastic consumer
products). Work with school/community groups,
retailers, local authorities and UK wide logistics partners to collect hard plastic toys for recycling, either separately (e.g. schools and shops) or with other hard plastics (e.g. at council recycling centres). Promote the recycling of other hard to
recycle items (e.g. batteries and electronics) or reuse of items (working electronics and textiles) which can generate rewards for schools (e.g. new books) – with new collections in school and in shops and promotion of existing services.
Jan/Feb 2022 | toy news | 21
n Successful creation of a new, global toy swap campaign promoting reuse to support children’s charities worldwide
n Creation of a new toy reuse distribution infrastructure
n Have engaged 70%+ of our global school’s network in the toy take back programme
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