Toys can have a second life, too.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/07/11
By: Fainjin Lin

Warning: This article includes spoilers for Toy Story 4, but you should still read it.

Toys play an important role in everyone's childhood, but the children grow up, they would inevitably bid farewell to their most beloved toys. Once the toys are abandoned from their home, though, are they headed towards an end… or the beginning of another journey?

Most people would choose to throw away their toys if they cannot gift them to another household. Recycling toys is difficult because they are often assembled with different materials. A toy car, for example, would have a plastic shell, rubber tires, and metal gears – these parts require manual disassembling and sorting before it can be recycled. Without going through a specific process, most toys would go straight to waste incineration.

Many Taiwanese choose to donate their unwanted toys to a Toy Bank in order to avoid polluting the environment or creating waste.

Donated toys would be roughly categorized into “in good condition,” “damaged,” or “missing parts.”

A professional “toy doctor” is then responsible for examining and repairing damaged toys. If a toy is beyond repair, the doctor would disassemble the parts for other repairs and functions; the parts that cannot be used again would be recycled or discarded.    [FULL  STORY]