Smart toy shopping this holiday season
November 24, 2009 | Length: 00:03:34
Looking to buy a 'green' toy for the holidays? San Francisco based Green Toys manufacture their toys out of recycled milk containers. The safe plastic material is called high-density polyethylene and it's free from suspect chemicals you might find in other children's toys. SmartPlanet talks to the co-founders about their business plan, innovative packaging concept, and how the company is reducing its carbon footprint by making its toys in the United States.
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>> Toys are made in all shapes and sizes. Some meet the highest quality safety standards while others don't comply. And then there's Green Toys, a small startup based in the San Francisco Bay area.
>> We think parents are looking at toys like they look at food. They want to know what's in it and where it comes from.
>> They've been really good about keeping the sharp edges
>> Laurie Hyman and Robert von Goeben are the founders of the business. The two entrepreneurs manufacture their toys using safer and cleaner materials than you'll find in most children's toys.
>> This particular plastic is made from 100 percent recycled milk jugs. Besides the colorant, which is FDA approved, we don't add anything to it. So initially this is essentially food grade plastic.
>> They're the same milk containers that people drink out of every day. The plastic material is called high density polyethylene, or HDPE, and it's free from suspect chemicals such as bisphenol A otherwise known as BPA. Hyman and von Goeben say the recycled plastic used to cost more but with municipalities ramping up their recycling programs the company is able to buy their materials at a reasonable cost.
>> The post consumer recycled material is becoming more and more available. So the price differential between post consumer recycled material and virgin material is getting smaller.
>> The execs add that their toys go through a rigorous testing and compliance phase before they're shipped to retail, and they're packaged in an environmentally friendly way using only cardboard.
>> Green packaging is also minimal packaging. So what we try to do is use the smallest amount of material we can to hold the product in. There's no twist ties. There's no cellophane. There's no plastic of any kind in our packaging. They're very, very easy to open and very easy to get to when you want to take the toys out.
>> But it's not just their approach to materials and packaging that is more sustainable. The company is also looking to reduce their carbon footprint. It all starts with where they make their toys right here in the U.S.
>> We're not shipping products back and forth from China. Most of the toys sold here in the U.S. come over from China so we reduce our carbon footprint by not having these barges go back and forth across the ocean.
>> Still making toys in the U.S. is more expensive than overseas from the manufacturing cost to the price of materials.
>> There's no doubt about the fact that doing things in the United States and doing things in an environmentally conscious way do cost more and that reflects in our products do charge a little premium over standard products.
>> Von Goeben says the retail cost is about 20 to 30 percent more than your average toy, but he believes that consumers are willing to pay a little more for sustainable products. So is being green good for the bottom line?
>> What we want to do is really plug into consumer demand, and there's this huge pent up demand right now, so as long as we can fill that demand and continue to see sales grow, the bottom line will take care of itself.
>> Green Toys proving a sustainable business can be smart business. For SmartPlanet I'm Seemi Daus assumed spelling.
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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====