Toy Packaging

[fossyant]

Goodness gracious.....

What is it with toy packaging - ties, cable ties, elastic, plastic mouldings... blooming heck... it's just taken ages to remove about 4 toys from the boxes......

Dolls are worse - all sorts of ties, including sewn into the hair !!!!

 

[beanzontoast]

We bought this year with minimal packaging in mind - and these were presents for adults. Still ended up with a pile of cardboard and paper, a bunch of those plastic wire ties (which I keep and reuse), and assorted inserts.

 

[Mr Pig]

Dolls are worse - all sorts of ties, including sewn into the hair !!!!

Bratz are the worst. Just as well they've been banned!

 

[Night Train]

Amazon are really bad in terms of wasteful packaging. Lots of air, brown paper and bubble wrap in a huge box about twice the size of the item in it.
Fortunately I can reuse most of it.

 

[Willow]

We used to do all that before packing them up so the children could actually play with them on christmas day!

 

[Piemaster]

Cardboard I don't mind too much, at least it can go to recycling centre.
But 'plastic popcorn' the expanded foam stuff .......

 

[summerdays]

I don't mind cardboard - it just goes outside for the recycling - though I don't know why my pile of boxes is always bigger than my neighbours (and that's with flattening/stacking boxes within box etc). Its all the plastic I can't stand and when you are in the shops, despite your best efforts you end up with a plastic bag if you aren't careful.

We bought Swatches for our kids this year... and one of them arrived in a box that was 6x6x12 inches. The internal watch box was about 1x1x10 !! and from abroad despite ordering from a UK site apparently.

 

[mickle]

But 'plastic popcorn' the expanded foam stuff .......

Most of that stuff is made from potato or corn starch these days so is not only recycleable or compostable but .. er .. edible.

 

[summerdays]

Most of that stuff is made from potato or corn starch these days so is not only recycleable or compostable but .. er .. edible.

And if you have kids they can lick/wet the ends of it and stick it together to make sculptures!

 

[Chrisz]

The mother/father-in-law bought our little one a play farm and a pack of animals to go in in (14 in total) - every single animal had one of those wire twists around each leg!! After half an hour with the snips I was knee deep in wire ties and getting to the end of my tether!

The recycling bin is full and there are three black sacks full of wrapping and packaging stuff!

Thankfully, I picked my bike frame up from the LBS and left all the pckaging for them to sort out

 

[hambones]

Greenlight void filla (the Wotsits lookalike) is biodegradable but the same cannot be said for the more common Flopak variety! £7 for a 15 cu. ft bag.....

Gawd how I miss work.... :-)

 

[fossyant]

Yes it was the Bratz stuff with the terrible packaging - Daughter got the Bratz Limo (in-laws picked it up for £23, rather than £60) and the sodding door has already fallen off (broken) so I'll fire an email off to the manufacturer (shop was Woolies, so no chance of a new one)

 

[Speicher]

All these boxes, small ones and medium ones and all the bubble wrap, packaging chips, what to do with it?

Ask your local Oxfam shop if they are selling things "on-line". For some items they get a much better price than they would in the shop. They may be able to re-use your boxes etc, for posting things.

I used to put all my large boxes and those polysterene chips on Freecycle. But I know that some people on here have not had good experiences with Freecycle. But if you know the quantity of cardboard packaging, plastic and ginormous sheets of bubble wrap involved in the building trade, you may realise why I persevered with Freecyle. The Book cardboard outer thingies, go to a second hand shop for him to post books in, so it gets recycled at least once more.

 

[Piemaster]

Most of that stuff is made from potato or corn starch these days so is not only recycleable or compostable but .. er .. edible.

But how do you tell which is which?

Unless the edible stuff is being sold in cinemas?

 

[summerdays]

The corn starch variety is softer, more translucent and only sausage shaped rather than little 's' shaped. And the ultimate test - try wetting one and sticking it together with another one - if it sticks then its cornstarch.