The festive season approaches - how much landfill will you be buying ...

[Corncrake]

I tried to bring up my children playing with wooden toys, plenty of 'make believe' involving old dressing up clothes and cardboard boxes and the minimum of plastic toys though at friends' houses they would love to play with them. I had had a country childhood and spent much of it outdoors - a London childhood was very different.

I remember seeing so many broken plastic trikes and wendy houses at their nursery schools and imagine it all ended up in landfill ...


"Watch the latest advertisement for Toys ‘R Us in the US(3). A man dressed up as a ranger herds children onto a green bus belonging to “the Meet the Trees Foundation”. “Today we’re taking the kids on the best field trip they could wish for,” he confides to us. “And they don’t even know it.”

On the bus he starts teaching them, badly, about leaves. The children yawn and shift in their seats. Suddenly he announces, “but we’re not going to the forest today …”. He strips off his ranger shirt. “We’re going to Toys ‘R Us guys!” The children go beserk. “We’re going to get to play with all the toys, and you’re going to get to choose any toy that you want!” The children run, in slow motion, down the aisles of the shop, then almost swoon as they caress their chosen toys.

Nature is tedious, plastic is thrilling. The inner-city children I took to the woods a few weeks ago would tell a different story(4), but hammer home the message often enough and it becomes true.

Christmas permits the global bull**** industry to recruit the values with which so many of us would like the festival to be invested – love, warmth, a community of spirit – to the sole end of selling things that no one needs or even wants. Sadly, like all newspapers, the Guardian participates in this orgy. Saturday’s magazine contained what looks like a shopping list for the last days of the Roman empire(5). There’s a smart cuckoo clock, for those whose dumb ones aren’t up to the mark; a remotely-operated kettle; a soap dispenser at £55; a mahogany skateboard (disgracefully, the provenance of the wood is mentioned by neither the Guardian nor the retailer(6)); a “papardelle rolling pin”, whatever the hell that is; £25 chocolate baubles; a £16 box of, er, garden twine.

Are we so bored, so affectless, that we need to receive this junk to ignite one last spark of hedonic satisfaction? Have people become so immune to fellow feeling that they are prepared to spend £46 on a jar for dog treats or £6.50 a bang on personalised crackers, rather than give the money to a better cause?(7) Or is this the Western world’s potlatch, spending ridiculous sums on conspicuously useless gifts to enhance our social status? If so, we must have forgotten that those who are impressed by money are not worth impressing."

Read rest of the article here: http://www.monbiot.com/2013/11/25/spend-dont-mend/

[ulli]

Great article.

This part caught my eye...It truly is a vicious circle.

"He understood that the government’s programme for economic recovery depends on unceasing consumption:
that if people start repairing things, the scheme collapses; that mahogany skateboards and wifi kettles are necessary responses to a saturated market; that the iron god of growth to which we must bow demands that we spend the living world into oblivion."

[transiten]

The Iron Age "The Kali Yuga" is withering away since we're heading into The Golden Age..i wonder if i'm still around when that happens...

[Mandala]

None at all.

[seleka]

I am not the only decision maker here. A great way to limit your plastic is to buy the plastic toys at the thrift store, that way you are not supporting new plastics being made. They can make plastic out of vegetable matter now anyway... they should use that.

[Kindling]

Great idea Karika. Well, I still have a daughter at home and would have a difficult time not giving her the one thing she asks for at Christmas time. She usually gets to ask for one thing that's really important to her and sometimes she thinks about it for months! Now any additional things I get her I definitely try to be more conscious.

For the grandkids I've tried to start out right so they know not to expect that kind of stuff (plastics, electronics, etc). I stick with wooden toys, books, art supplies, games. I love the Melissa and Doug wooden toys and they really keep the young kids entertained.

Link: Melissa and Doug Toys :-) The boys and girls love playing with the dress up dolls. It reminds you of paper dolls! I mention the boys liking them because I bought them for my little granddaughter and my grandson liked them just as much so I had to get him some too.

[Corncrake]

I am a regular user of 'thrift stores' - in the UK called charity shops - as it is a great way to re-cycle and it used to be cheap. Unfortunately, in London they have become very expensive due to the popularity of 'vintage clothing'. Great for the charities not so good for the people who really need them.

School fairs are a good idea too as parents bring in outgrown toys for the parents of younger children to buy.

Loved paper dolls (you would often get cut outs on the back page of comics like June and Schoolfriend) - you could be really creative with them.