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Mattel wants your old Barbie dolls, Matchbox cars and MEGA building blocks — so it can save them from landfills and recycle them to make new ones.
In what is being billed as an eco-friendly new strategy, the toy giant said Monday it’s launching a pilot program that aims to recycle 100 percent of all of its toys and to convert them to bio-based plastic materials including its packaging by 2030.
Consumers who participate in the program, called Mattel PlayBack, download a free shipping label on the company’s website, pack up their toys and send it to Mattel.
“The Mattel PlayBack program helps parents and caregivers ensure that materials stay in play,” the company’s head of sustainability, Pamela Gill-Alabaster said in a statement, “and out of landfills, with the aim to repurpose these materials as recycled content in new toys.”
The program, which initially is only accepting used Barbies, Matchbox cars and MEGA building blocks, is being launched in the US and Canada but there are plans to roll it out in Europe as well.
Last year, the El Segundo, Calif.-based company made several toys from recycled or bio-based plastic materials, including the Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack and its UNO card deck, which also was the first time the game did not come with cellophane packing materials.
The efforts come amid a record demand for toys during the pandemic, with Barbie in particular fueling a huge surge for Mattel. Sales of Barbie were up by 87 percent in the most recent quarter, the company reported in April, when toy sales usually taper off after the holiday splurge.
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