Dumping the junk

I received a terrific volume of suggestions for how to donate the toys in good shape that my children have outgrown - thank you!  But I still have a problem...there are toys that are not in good shape and need to be thrown away.  Option one, throw them in the trash.  This is so 1970, right?  But the trash will take them and put them in a landfill.  My great-grandchildren will be able to excavate them since plastic doesn't break down.

I just want to find a way to recycle them.  Not donate - they're not worthy.

When I realized I had 15 pairs of beat-up children's shoes, I kept them in a box in my trunk for 3 months intending to mail them to Nike so that they would become the ground cover for playgrounds.  After three months, they were still in my trunk.  So I was so happy when I went to Roadrunner shoes, got fit for swank running shoes and saw the recycle sneakers box.  Elation and joy!  15 pairs of shoes recycled.

I can recycle our broken electronics.  I want to recycle our broken toys.  Here I am with toys filling my house...we have asked grandparents and family to give memories over toys.  I don't want to throw these items in the trash - I want to recycle them responsibly. 

Where can I drop off, mail or otherwise get rid of broken toys without filling landfills?

Comments

[Joellyn Palomaki]

One man's trash is another man's treasure - you'd be surprised what people will want if you give it away for free. I don't know how it is in Burlingame, but it's pretty typical for people in Berkeley/Oakland to just drag all their stuff to the sidewalk, display it all on a blanket, throw up an ad on craigslist for free stuff, and man the give-away. My neighbor did it not long ago because he couldn't stand to see so much stuff hit the landfill, and it wasn't quite suitable for donation either. He got rid of a lot and met a lot of interesting folks!

[Heidi Carson]

My guess is you have to break the toys into their component pieces somehow and recycle/discard them separately. We started a compost last year, so I'm guessing anything made of wood, paper, or fabric can be composted, especially if you can cut it into small pieces. As for random plastic pieces - just recently, we randomly received a set of plastic toy pieces from a neighbor that turned out to be kind of useless in that they wouldn't connect together and there was not much you could do with them. They didn't have the recycling icon on them, so I ended up putting them in a bag and throwing them away. I didn't feel particularly good about it -- but it represented less waste than even a few days of disposable diapers, by comparison. (Not that I'm happy about disposable diapers either, but that's another story...)