Give your local facility a call to see if they accept plastic codes #1 (soft), #4, and #5. By Eleanor Goldberg, HuffPost US
Eleanor Goldberg

That is, until you consider just how damaging an effect said present will have on the world he’s going to inherit.Plastic toys, which tend to be inexpensive and vibrantly colored, account for “If it’s a flimsy plastic toy that clearly isn’t going to have more than a lifetime of a few days or weeks, would you really want to be getting that material?” Kevin Brigden, senior scientist at Greenpeace International Science Unit, told HuffPost. “There are really very few toys that are good candidates for recycling,” Bell told HuffPost.Plastic toys pose a unique challenge because they’re typically composed of other materials too, such as metals. Some centers can recycle codes #1 (soft), #4, and #5. If your toys are in good working order you could try to sell them, donate them to a charity shop or a local church, toy library or playgroup. The problem with this, obviously, is that toys are made with Most of the time they end up in the trash,” said Steve Rho, CEO of sustainable toy company It hit Rho just how detrimental plastic toys are after he took one of his daughters to a birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese’s location in Los Angeles. Its not like you can just toss them into your recycle bin.

The well-known Or, the playthings can be made from such insufficient materials that they’ll fall apart after just a few uses and quickly wind up in the trash.“You have all these toys ― they’re cheap, they’re made out of plastic, they break easily. PVC (Polyvinyl chloride): Marked by a "3" and "PVC," this type of plastic is less commonly accepted … When his daughter got home, she played with the toys with her sister for a little while, until most of them broke.Rho and his wife, Kristin, had no choice but to dump the plastic bits into the garbage since they knew their local recycling center wouldn’t accept such items.“It kind of dawned on us, that was us ― one family,” Rho said. AskLogin. SUBSCRIBE TO THE DAILY BRIEF NEWSLETTER FROM HUFFPOST INDIA This can be troubling when you consider that more than 40% of the toys gifted to kids during the holiday season alone

Until recently, recycling options for broken and unusable toys have been difficult to come by.

“Let’s think of all the other families at this birthday party, all the families that come to Chuck E. Cheese’s for birthday parties every day ― that’s a huge amount of plastic waste.
Business Reporter, HuffPost While metal and electronics components can be easier to recycle, toy pieces made of plastic and wood may be more difficult.” “Recycling plastic toys is difficult.

“To recycle children’s toys, you’ll most likely need to break them apart into separate materials. And while they might not land in the trash right away, they can’t be recycled either.Environmentalists have a number of pressing concerns when it comes to the way in which plastic is interacting with the environment.

That’s where Lego said it’s working to make its products more sustainable, but that’s still a long way off. In 2014, Americans generated about One of the things that separates plastic toys from other plastic objects is that they’re essentially destined for the landfill, said Brent Bell, vice president of recycling at Waste Management, a company that provides recycling solutions to businesses and residences in North America. The recyclable components can’t be separated out, and become prohibitive for recycling centers, Bell explained.It’s not just the environmental impact that advocates are concerned about.

While many broken electronic toys can be recycled by state-operated Children receive plastic toys for birthdays and holidays, in gift bags at parties and inside cereal boxes and meals at fast food restaurants.