Many parents today have a lot of concerns about the toys they give their children. With all the concerns and publicity about global warming and importance of conserving energy, socially conscience parents also want to buys toys that don’t have a negative impact on the environment. Finding Green Toys does not have to be an impossible task. We have done some research and found two companies that deserve a lot of credit in their efforts by creating environmentally friendly toys. Green Toys and Play toys have both taken going Green to a new level.

The best example of a Green Toys company is aptly names Green Toys. This new company has combined all aspects that parents look for when trying to find safe toys for their kids. The line currently only has 4 products but they are all winners. Their current collection includes a Sand Play Set, Cookware and Dining Set, Indoor Gardening Kit, and the soon to be released Tea Set. These toys are manufactured, assembled and tested in the USA so parents don’t need to worry about any potential risks associated with Chinese factories. Green Toys makes sure that their products contain no phthalates, BPA or lead, and that they meet FDA requirements for food contact.

Green Toys makes all their products from curbside collected plastic milk. These plastic containers are collected at your curb by a local recycling company, who then sorts them from all the other types of plastic. The milk containers are then reprocessed into super clean fresh plastic called high-density polyethylene (or HDPE). This material is considered one of the safest, cleanest plastics around.

The environmental mission of Green Toys also extends to their packaging. They strive to minimize packaging so all their boxes use as little material as possible. Green Toys only uses recycled corrugated boxes with no plastics, cellophane or twist-ties, and are 100% recyclable. Green toys tries to take every precaution to make sure that their products and packaging won’t end up adding to land fills.

Many parents today are looking for toys made in the USA and Green Toys is happy to oblige. Making toys in California has a lot of other added bonuses for parents and the environment. California is a state known for strict toy safety and environmental laws. This makes the toys that much safer for your children. Another added bonus is that transportation is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gasses. By making toys in California a lot less fuel is used in the transportation of the toys before they get to shelves in your local store. Every step in the process, from milk container recycling to toy production to final assembly, occurs in California. This way the raw materials and toys are not shipped from overseas. This saves a lot of energy and thus reduces greenhouse gasses. Parents can feel good about buying products made by Green Toys. These American made toys are non-toxic, save energy, reduce landfill waste and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Although few companies have gone Green as well as the Green Toys company we highly recommend the products made by Plan Toys. This fantastic Thailand based toy company has initiated a Green Concept as part of its overall Mission Statement. Their efforts start with environmentally friendly materials. PlanToys® makes their href=”http://www.sensoryedge.com/plan-toys.html”>educational toys and products from clean, natural rubberwood. Rubber trees are used to create latex but once they can no longer be used for this purpose they are often cut for wood to make toys and furniture. Plan No fertilizer is added so that the wood stays chemical free. Moreover, to stabilize the wood, PlanToys® uses a time consuming chemical-free kiln drying process.

Many problems have been found in the glue and paints used in children’s toys. To circumvent this problem Play Toys assembles their products by using a proprietary non-formaldehyde glue instead of the traditional toxic wood glue. This proprietary glue is E-Zero which means it contains no Formaldehyde emission. They also use non-toxic, water based dyes to add accent colors to products instead of paint. This color contains no heavy metal elements such as lead or mercury.

In addition to keeping with their green concept PlanToys® uses recycled and recyclable material to minimize their impact on the environment. They also use soy ink & water based ink on printed materials. This ink decomposes faster than regular chemical ink and can be recycled more efficiently. PlanToys® integrates alternative energy, e.g. solar cell and biomass or wood scrap which can be used to generate energy for machinery that kiln- dry the wood and the paint. Every effort is made throughout the manufacturing process to make their toys safe for kids and the environment.

As the myth around global warming begins to unravel and Operation Desperation sets in, it’s important for the public to know why biofuels aren’t the answer to solving global warming. For those that don’t know, biofuels are alternative energy sources derived from living matter, as opposed to fossil fuels, such as oil, which are derived from nonliving matter. The most common biofuel is a blend of gasoline called E85, which means it’s 15% gasoline and 85% ethanol. However, the gasoline and ethanol content changes depending on the season. During cold weather, more gasoline needs to be added to the mixture to ensure the fuel works properly, so E85 is at least 70% ethanol.

If biofuels are going to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, what’s the big deal? Ethanol, without consideration of other factors, could cut our dependency on foreign oil. However, ethanol as a fuel still requires gasoline to function properly. As stated in the previous paragraph, cold weather is especially trying for ethanol and therefore more gasoline has to be added to the mix - as much as 200% more gasoline. Again, if this were the only problem, a 70% overall reduction in regular oil-based gasoline consumption would cause the price of oil to sink like a rock.

But it’s not entirely about the reduction of petroleum-based fuel. Biofuels such as E85 are causing food shortages globally. Corn is the primary food base from which ethanol is derived. Since corn is grown and harvested by farmers, there is a finite amount of land that can be used to produce corn. The demand for the corn crop has grown substantially due to the push for biofuels while the supply has struggled to keep up. Corn is more profitable to grow now due to the increased demand, so those in agriculture are growing more corn at the sacrifice of wheat and soy. Instead of a shortage in one staple crop, corn, there is now a shortage in two additional food staples: wheat and soy. This brings on three new sets of problems: lack of land on which to grow corn and other staples, soaring food prices and, yes, potential starvation of the poor.

Remember the early days of global warming when all it took to save the world was to plant a few trees? As if every day was Arbor Day, the environmentalists pushed their tree-hugging agenda on anyone that would listen. Trees were the cornerstone of the green movement and suddenly every major corporation prominently displayed the recycled content on their containers, proud to be a part of saving the world. Now the tree-hugging philosophy may fail as more land is needed to produce corn - and that land will have to come from deforestation. Millions of carbon dioxide-breathing trees may meet their end as the demand for biofuels increases over the coming years and decades. And a recent study found that converting land to use for biofuel crops worsens global warming. Buy a gallon, kill a tree.

If you eat anything, you’re not immune to the skyrocketing food prices. Just as higher oil prices have caused the price of goods to increase due to higher transportation costs, the price of corn has jumped significantly - around 30% already this year - due to the push of biofuels. As if that weren’t enough, wheat and soy prices have followed similar paths due to short supply, all thanks to global warming and the effort to reduce our collective carbon footprints. Isn’t it the poor that our friends on the environmentally-friendly left always want to help by taking our hard-earned tax dollars and redistributing them to the needy? Get ready to be gouged even more as Hatians are eating mud cookies because they can’t afford corn and residents of Kenya are rioting over food.

You see, the push to stop global warming is hurting the very people that the left-leaning wing of this world has fought so hard to protect make more dependent on the government for subsidies. With food prices causing the poor to become even more destitute, you can count on more tax dollars being pulled from your paycheck to cover the cost. With ethanol costing about the same as gasoline, there are two possible scenarios ahead of us. If those of us that are educated about ethanol choose not to buy the product because of the side-effects, maybe the decreased demand will help food prices to drop.

Unfortunately, ethanol is a government-subsidized product and they can pump more dollars into lowering the price further, which will spark interest in the new fuel and increase demand. It’s a no-win situation for the informed consumer. Our only hope is that global warming is truly found to be a hoax so we can go back living normal lives without fear of potentially starving our neighbors every time we fill up.