I’m a little behind the curve on this one.
Those of you who have young children may have made your decisions already, about what toy (or toys, plural) to purchase for Christmas this year.
And those of you who don’t have young children, are unlikely to have any. Either because you’ve been there, done that… or because you’re a member of Generation Z, a population segment that appears to have abandoned the idea of children. (Understandably.)
So I may be addressing a rather small number of Daily Post readers. Fewer than 50? A dozen, maybe? But I’m going to plow ahead anyway.
I’m speaking to you as a father who struggled with picking appropriate toys for my kids.
It was mostly an internal struggle, because my wife Darlene dealt with most of the actual purchases, which meant clothing. Necessary items, like boots and jackets and pajamas. Unlike me, she kept track of what size clothes the kids wore, and — as they got older — what commercial logos they would and wouldn’t wear on their t-shirts.
But when the kids were younger — before they even new what a logo was — I took charge of buying the toys. Darlene believed that, due to my general lack of maturity and my affection for breakable plastic junk, I was better suited to picking out appropriate toys.
But back in those days — we’re talking, the 1990s — I had no idea that plastic junk played a major role in polluting the world’s rivers and streams and oceans. In fact, I don’t think I ‘d even heard the word, “sustainable”. I had the distinct impression that Mother Nature could handle whatever we could throw at her, sort of the same way Darlene and I were always able to score another 0% interest credit card every six months or so.
Needless to say, I’ve lost my burning desire to buy toys for my kids at Christmas, now that they’ve moved on to asking for different types of gifts. More expensive types of gifts. New tires. Big screen TVs.
But someday, I might be a grandpa, and forced to think about sustainable toys. I read somewhere that 26.8 million toys are thrown away each year, and over 90% of that junk is made from plastic… and that an abandoned (or more likely, broken) plastic toy takes over 1,000 years to fully degrade in the landfill.
The Pyramids of Giza are 4,500 years old, and also have not fully degraded. But they are tourist attractions. I’m pretty sure the Archuleta County Landfill will not be a tourist attraction in 4,500 years.
There’s a good reason 90% of tossed toys are plastic. Plastic is cheap. End of story.
Or rather, the beginning of the story. The story we teach our children. That the goal of human existence is to accumulate as many toys as possible, and then throw them away when they break.
Which brings us to the world’s most sustainable toy.
A piece of string.
Preferably about 60 inches long.
You need a 40-inch piece to play cat’s cradle,.
You can use the other 20 inches to tie up the garbage bag full of broken plastic toys..