Hey Quad Citians, Mattel Wants Your Used Toys

This is good news if you're storing your kids' old toys in the attic or basement.

Mattel wants to recycle their old toys. The toy company which has been around longer than I have, is launching a pilot program called "Mattel PlayBack" that's designed to recover and reuse materials in old toys for future Mattel products.

You might say it's the ultimate recycling program for toys. The company has committed to using 100% recycled, recyclable or bio-based plastic materials across all of its products and packaging by 2030.

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Here's what you do.

Go to Mattel's website, printing a free shipping label, pack up and mail toys back to the company. The toys will then be sorted and separated by material type and processed and recycled, according to the company. Materials that cannot be repurposed as recycled content in new toys will either be downcycled into other plastic products or converted from waste to energy.

If you've passed down toys from generation to generation and there's no where else for the toys to go, this is an excellent option. Mattel really hopes the toys don't end up in landfills.

Last year, Mattel introduced several toys as part of its goal to achieve 100% recycled, recyclable or bio-based plastic materials across all products and packaging by 2030, including the Fisher-Price^® Rock-a-Stack^® and Fisher-Price^® Baby’s First Blocks, made from bio-based plastics, three MEGA Bloks^® sets made from bio-based plastics, and UNO^® Nothin’ But Paper, the first fully recyclable UNO^® deck without cellophane packing materials.  

For more information on the Mattel PlayBack program, visit Mattel.com/PlayBack. For more information on Mattel’s sustainability and corporate social responsibility efforts, visit https://corporate.mattel.com/en-us/citizenship.