Green Toys wants to play in a bigger recycled materials sandbox

New Orleans — Green Toys Inc. has made a name for itself by recycling millions and millions of used milk jugs into brightly colored children's toys.

And the company, with an appetite for growth, sees an opportunity to use more than just high density polyethylene to create an even wider selection of products.

The Sausalito, Calif.-based firm already is dipping its toes into the recycled polypropylene market to make some toy components. But it's not any easy move, explained Shahram Baradaran, quality and compliance program manager at the company.

HDPE, readily available, has been the company's bread-and-butter raw material, accounting for about 95 percent of production these days. But the material can be difficult at times to mold into the types of products Green Toys is making, he explained.

PP can provide an alternative, but is more difficult to find in the form Green Toys needs.

"We're using polypropylene, but in a much smaller way. The main reason is we can't get natural polypropylene. We can only get polypropylene that is a grayish color. That's because feedstocks are not as consistent. So it becomes a challenge," he said.

"We make children's products. We need them to be nice and bright and colorful. And it's difficult to achieve the colors that we want with the polypropylene that is available to us."

It's just been in the last year or so that Green Toys has started to use PP, and the company is looking for even more resins and materials to incorporate into its products. The characteristics of HDPE currently limit the company's ability to injection mold its toys. Different melt flows would allow Green Toys to design and manufacture a wider variety of products.

Green Toys only uses post-consumer resin, which resonates with consumers.

"Folks are familiar with a milk jug. They can tangibly see a milk jug created this toy. So the marketing message is powerful. It's simple. But when you are talking about postindustrial, it's a little bit more vague. It's not quite as relatable as postconsumer is," Baradaran said.

"The other issues are just what was the original grade of the post-industrial material? It's kind of a mishmash of different things. ... Customers, what they perceive as safe verses what's actually safe, is a different animal. So It just becomes a little more challenging of a marketing message. We can prove that the material is safe via testing. We can send out product to the lab and get it tested. But, really, it's more of a marketing hurdle more than anything else."

Baradaran told the audience at the recent Plastics Recycling 2017 conference in New Orleans that his firm is looking to partner with people in the recycling industry to find new materials to expand the company's product line, including softer materials such as thermoplastic elastomers.

Green Toys, Baradaran said, has recycled the equivalent of 47 million milk jugs since the company started, or about 6.25 million pounds of HDPE.

"I think it's important to make the message clear that we need to be stewards. We're all in it to make money and to have successful businesses. But can we do it while not sacrificing the health of the planet? If we can reduce our carbon footprint and provide the products to our customers, why not do it? So I think that's really the vision of Green Toys and that's what really differentiates ourselves from other toy companies," Baradaran said.