Toy company Mattel (El Segundo, California / USA, www.mattel.com) has announced the start of its “PlayBack” recycling project to process discarded plastic into playground equipment, a programme being launched in the US, UK, Canada, Germany and France.

In Germany, the entire brand portfolio – made primarily of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and polypropylene – will be collected and recycled. To participate, consumers can send their broken or discarded toys, without batteries, back to the company free of charge. Project partners are postal and courier service company Deutsche Post DHL (Bonn / Germany; www.dpdhl.com), and waste disposal company Bral Berlin (Berlin / Germany; www.bral.berlin). The programme is being coordinated by HolyPoly (Dresden; www.holypoly.co), a start-up that specialises in recycling and product design and worked with Mattel subsidiary Fisher-Price on a recycling project in 2020.

The recycled granulates from the project are to be used to build play areas. “We will decide in the course of the coming year, together with the institution that will receive the donated playground, which parts exactly will be used and where we will fall back on purchased – if possible, recycled – parts,” said a company spokesperson, in response to a Plasteurope.com enquiry. According to the company, the playground will be donated to a charitable institution.

In 2020, Mattel had unveiled several toys made from bio-based plastics as part of its sustainability strategy – the company aims to use 100% recycled, recyclable or bio-based plastic materials in all its products and packaging by 2030, including Fisher-Price’s “Rock-a-Stack” toy made from sugarcane-based polyethylene (see Plasteurope.com of 09.01.2020). “We are on the lookout for more sustainable-material alternatives,” the spokesperson added.