Outgrown but not outworn: how toy swaps are tackling waste in Australia, one teddy at a time | Waste

Australians throw away about 27m toys annually. It’s not only a area of interest subject – about 87,000 tonnes are despatched to landfill yearly.About half (51%) of latest toys bought grow to be waste inside a 12 months, in accordance with analysis commissioned by the Australian Toy Affiliation and Sustainability Victoria.However eliminating toys could be tough. They’re difficult to recycle, and after they’re in good situation or have sentimental worth, folks discover them onerous to throw away.Reuse by means of charities, toy libraries and swaps gives preloved toys a second life and a substitute for landfill.Jenna Condie, a social scientist based mostly within the Blue Mountains, has been organising an everyday youngsters’s garments and toy swap since 2022. The concept is easy: households carry gadgets they’ve outgrown, however not outworn, and might take house others they need or want. The native occasion has been rising in recognition, with 85 households taking part in the newest swap.Having grow to be a mother or father shortly after the black summer season bushfires, Condie sought alternatives for local weather motion and group organising. They included becoming a member of the advocacy group Dad and mom for Local weather.“While you’ve obtained a toddler, and also you’re involved about their future, and you’ll see this relentless consumerist capitalist system, how do you really resist that?” she says. “You may’t try this individually.”The swap is a group occasion that goals to shift consumption practices and normalise local weather motion, she says. It additionally goals to carry folks collectively and help them in a cost-of-living disaster.There are tangible advantages. “That is decreasing landfill waste,” she says. “That is us redistributing, on common, 250kg of clothes and between 50 and 100kg of toys each swap.”It’s additionally an area for folks to hang around and for kids to play. “It’s an early entry level for kids into change and reuse, they usually actually get numerous pleasure out of the toys.”Sydney’s largest ever toy tradeThe rising grassroots motion is coming collectively from 1 to 14 September to create Sydney’s first citywide toy swap. It is going to function eight community-led occasions throughout higher Sydney and the Blue Mountains.“It’s greater than only a swap,” says organiser Jacky Lo, a director of the not-for-profit Pleasure of Giving. “It’s a motion of pleasure and look after the planet, for our communities and for our youngsters’s future.”Lo began operating toy swaps in Marrickville in 2019. This 12 months he has joined different community-led swaps, councils, faculties and local weather teams for the largest occasion but.It’s not the one swap occurring across the nation. In Melbourne, the Huge Toy Swap shall be held at Federation Sq. on 2 October.Who can be part of a toy swap?Anybody can come to a swap, Lo says. The primary requirement for these bringing toys to swap is that they’re in good situation, clear and full. Toys can vary from the small – akin to a Shopkin or dinosaur figurine – to one thing as giant as a Squishmallow.Everyone seems to be welcome, even when they don’t have one thing to commerce. Lo says a swap could be a enjoyable alternative for kids to study reuse and the sharing financial system, and for folks to speak with them in regards to the environmental affect of shopping for and throwing away plastic toys.If the subsequent technology can study to reuse first, as a substitute of shopping for new, it is going to assist to cut back the quantity of plastic waste going to landfill, he says.What when you can’t discover a swap close by?Swaps aren’t the one strategy to deal with toy waste. Australia has greater than 280 toy libraries that lend an enormous array of toys, puzzles and video games, often for a small membership price.Toys that aren’t wished or appropriate for swapping or donating to charity could be recycled at Huge W shops. Its toy recycling program has assortment factors for preloved toys at every of its 179 shops.Toys in good situation are donated to the Salvation Military for secondhand sale. Those who stay are sorted and recycled the place potential.Condie says at a person stage folks would possibly typically really feel their actions to assist the setting – akin to composting or recycling – don’t make a lot distinction, however a toy swap reveals how change can occur inside a group.“We’re displaying a community-led response to waste and consumption and shifting our collective practices into one thing else that’s extra sustainable, that’s extra caring,” she says.