Safer Toys for Tots
By Real Savvy Moms Green Living Expert Jennifer Taggart

You probably won’t find much resistance from your family if you swap disposable plastic for reusable shopping bags, buy yourself greener beauty products, or choose eco-friendly cleaners. But trying to go green with your child’s toys? A bit more of a challenge. In our media-driven consumer society, children prefer toys featuring popular characters, such as Cinderella or Transformers or SpongeBob. Not many of the licensed characters come in green toy options—at least so far.

That being said, going green includes buying less, so perhaps one of the easiest steps is just to limit the toys. For holidays and parties, you can ask relatives and friends to give consumable items, such as art or gardening supplies, or experience gifts, such as tickets or passes for ice skating, roller skating, the zoo, movies, or batting cages or anything else you can dream up. You can also have toy swap parties to pass along gently used toys.

Of course, you won’t get away with eliminating all toys. When buying new toys, opt for eco-friendly options if possible and choose wood or fiber over plastic. Why skip plastic? Plastic toys are made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource, and also end up in our landfills.

Wood toys are a great solution for replacing plastics. Choose solid wood over pressed woods to avoid formaldehyde, a carcinogen. While the amount of lead in paints and coatings is limited under federal law, recalls over the last several years demonstrate that compliance is not as complete as it should be. To avoid lead in paints and coatings, look for wood toys colored with vegetable dyes or those finished with walnut oil, linseed oil, pure tung oil (be careful – sometimes “tung oil finish” is used as a generic term to describe a wetted wood finish) or with beeswax. To protect our trees, look for the Forestry Stewardship’s seal indicating that the wood used was sustainably harvested.

Don’t forget fiber-based toys. If you can, choose fiber toys made from organic fibers. Organically grown natural fibers will be grown without pesticides. Also, try to skip fibers treated with formaldehyde. The giveaway? If the fiber is easy care or wrinkle resistant. If your textile toy has padding, opt for padding that isn’t polyurethane foam. Polyurethane foam releases volatile organic compounds, which can contribute to headaches, nausea, allergic reactions and even cancer, depending on the specific compound. Also, polyurethane foam usually is treated with a flame retardant to reduce flammability. Just check the fiber content label.

If you are buying plastic toys, then opt for safer plastics. One plastic you probably want to steer clear of is polyvinyl chloride or vinyl (also known as PVC). Vinyl must be stabilized and is often stabilized with lead. Lead is a potent neurotoxin and can slow development. Lead doesn’t like being in the plastic matrix, so it migrates to the surface of toys where it can be picked up during handling. There is a new federal law that limits the amount of lead in all toys (actually, all children’s products), but it was just implemented this year so compliance may not yet be complete. Vinyl also usually has hormone disrupting phthalates, although phthalates are also limited under the new federal law.

There are lost of options out there for greener toys, even at mainstream retailers. But for the widest selection of sustainable, greener materials, you’ll want to look online.

Jennifer Taggart is a mom of two, an environmental attorney, and the author of forthcoming The Smart Mama’s Guide to Going Green.