[Madpaddy]

I was tidying up my kids toys last night and as usual, I experienced a sense of self loathing for having purchased or allowed others to purchase so many lumps of generally useless lumps of plastic sh*t.

On so many levels, this disgusts me.

A.) The kids disgard or grow tired of playing with 90% of these toys within days.
B.) Many get broken and are rendered useless in the same time scale.
C.) Because they contain electronic components and metals they are not easily recycled. The labour involved in getting the lump of crap back to just a lump of plastic is uneconomical.
D.) It fills our small house with clutter.

Does anyone know how much oil is used in a kg of plastic and how many tonnes pf plastic each year is used in toys wordwide? I have spent some time trying to google this and have got nowhere.

I see this as one of the greatest misuses of oil.

[azreal60]

It's not one of the greatest misuses of oil, at least not in scale. It's simply the most visible to a person with children. I feel your pain man, but really, you have an option. Get rid of the toy's, stop buying new ones, endure a bit of whining about it, and BUY BOOKS. It's really that simple, only step 3 is annoying. But the sooner you do it the less your children will be fixated on the idea that life is there to provide for them, rather than them providing for life.

[Madpaddy]

We buy books all the time or use the library. Most of the toys now are from relations.

[azreal60]

Do what I did. Explain the no toy's policy to your relatives. They can have toys, if the are made of wood or if they are books or in some way educational. If your relatives have any respect for you at all, they'll respect that.

[pup55]

I am inclined to think the toy percentage of this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the polyethylene and polystyrene and ABS that is in packaging for drink bottles, detergent containers, etc. etc.

Not to mention the fact that today's average automobile contains a couple of hundred pounds of plastic, and we are consuming about 16 million vehicles per year.

There is a reference to the effect that the average landfill consists of somewhere between 10 and 15% hydrocarbons. Ironically, this is nearly the same percentage as the Alberta Tar Sands, so logically, at some point it will be economical to start mining this resource.

One of the worst, as far as I know, is carpet. Apparently, several billion pounds of carpet per year are tossed into landfills in the US, a lot of it nylon and polyester, both fossil fuel derived, and there is little or no economical way, at the moment, to recycle it meaningfully.

We will look back years from now, if we are still around, and just shake our heads at all of this.

[MonteQuest]

Does anyone know how much oil is used in a kg of plastic and how many tonnes pf plastic each year is used in toys wordwide? I have spent some time trying to google this and have got nowhere.

World percentage of oil use 4%

USA percentage of oil use 10%



http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources ... astics.htm

And what is frightening is that 70% of Americans don't know plastic is made from oil.

National Survey Reveals More than 70% of Americans Don't Know Plastic is Made from Oil

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070420/20070420005536.html

[Madpaddy]

Thanks Monte,

So toys account for 3% of 4% of world oil use or 0.12%.

[Pops]

either way his search engine optimization services are foiled again, hehe

[RankineCycle]

I received quite a bit of junky toys as a child, most of it is now buried in the Lycoming County landfill in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately their landfill gas cogeneration plant doesn't extract energy from plastics which do not biodegrade.

I usually couldn't bear to just throw something away even if it was defective, so there were countless items (mostly electronic) that I tore apart, salvaging the inner guts and throwing away the plastic housing. The inner guts would be saved even if it was just taking a few resistors off a circuit board or something.

The vast majority of the stuff sold as toys is garbage that either breaks after a few months, or contains flashy colors, lights, packaging, etc. that capture attention in the store and then the stuff is thrown in the closet after a day or two.

Some actual good toys are generic Lego sets. Or a whole bunch of specialized Lego sets all mixed together. K'NEX, lincoln logs, and the like. These I played with the most, and they never break or get "out of date". Though not every kid is an engineer type wanting to build stuff.