This year we are even more conscious that our choices matter when it comes to spending money and especially due to environmental reasons we are all looking for plastic free toys and ethical gifts for kids and babies.
There have always been plastic free toys, and environmentally friendly options available but the issue was that many were either unaffordable or unattractive (or both!).
Plastic toys first emerged in the 1940s when Fisher Price became the first toy company to produce their entire range in plastic. As a toy manufacturer plastic was both safe and versatile so it became the go to material to make toys and toys such as Barbie became very popular selling millions of dolls.
Despite the popularity of plastic there were always toy companies who stuck to traditional materials such as wood and tin but these toys became very niche and usually more expensive than plastic.
Fortunately, the rise in pressure from ethical consumers means that the choice of non plastic toys is much larger now and Best Years, along with many other toys companies, have consciously sought to reduce their use of plastic both in packaging and in the toys themselves.
We are very pleased to offer plastic free alternatives to popular kids toys, including natural rubber dinosaur toys instead of normal bath toys and wooden toys instead of plastic.
However, there is no point buying plastic free or ethical gifts if the toys are not played with so the issue is finding plastic free toys which your kids love as much as you do.
Hopefully we have some suggestions which are both ethical enough for the even the most ethical consumers but also have loads of play value for the kids.
Our wooden toys are a great place to start. They are fair trade and handmade but they are also upcycled, made from the wood left over from the manufacture of furniture. The wooden rainbow is perfect for encouraging open play in small children and if you are looking for a very special gift the wooden bus toy has more than enough play value to be played with for many years.
If you are looking for a bath toy then our natural rubber dinosaur toys are the perfect solution. They are handmade from natural rubber rather than plastic and importantly they do not have a hole in them so no chance of mouldy water being emerging in to the bath or worse, your kids mouth. Yuk! The fact that they are also dinosau toys is guaranteed to make them popular with your kids.
The Pebble crochet toys and baby rattles are already very popular with young children. Tactile and bright there is a huge choice of designs ranging from the octopus rattles to the astronaut doll. They are handmade in Bangladesh by a fair trade cooperative which creates jobs in rural Bangladesh. This means that rather than moving to the cities to find work people can stay in their villages and combine a paid job with family life. When you buy a Pebble toy your Xmas gift will help another family stay together or help a child go to school.
If you are looking for plastic free toys for babies rather than children then we have our organic toy range. Our organic baby comforters are fair trade and organic but like the wood they are also upcycled. They are made from the material left over from the manufacture of children's clothes, material which once would have gone in to landfill.
We are obviously not the only toy company offering plastic free toys but we hope that we have given you some ideas about plastic free Xmas gifts.
If you have any suggestions for other plastic free toys please join the debate on our Instagram and Facebook pages.
