A future free of plastic pollution is within our grasp.
For our children, that future begins with PLAY.
Play Without Plastic is a movement dedicated to creating plastic-free playscapes in homes and communities around the world.
We are a community of caring adults united in our desire to protect the environment, preserve the innocence of children and eliminate plastic pollution so life on Earth can thrive when we are gone.
Plastic pollution is killing our planet, with the toy industry leading the assault.
At every step of its production, use and disposal, plastic causes an alarming degree of damage to the planetary systems that support life on Planet Earth.
Global demand for plastic, which is synthesized from fossil fuels, has a huge impact on climate.
The factories where plastic gets made, and where toxic byproducts associated with its manufacture escape into the environment, are located near low income communities inhabited primarily by people of color, who are diagnosed with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses at far higher rates than places where plastic is not made.
Plastic leaches toxic chemicals into our food and beverages.
Plastic in the environment eventually degrades into microscopic particles that pollute the air, land, waterways and oceans. These tiny, irretrievable particles are found in animals worldwide, including human blood and amniotic fluid. They are found in the deepest oceans and on the highest mountains. The airborne particles of “dust” we breathe in every day, which have been primarily mineral in composition throughout our evolutionary history, are now primarily polymeric.
Our lust for this unnatural substance is doing untold damage to Planet Earth and humanity, including those living and those yet to be born as well as countless innocent creatures who have the great misfortune of sharing the planet with us in this Plastic Age.
Imagine a future free of plastic pollution.
Playscapes without plastic allow children to imagine a world without plastic pollution.
In their earliest years, children take whatever toys adults give them and find ways to enjoy those toys regardless of what they are made from. As they get older, children are influenced by advertising and the experiences they share with their peers. Most of the advertising targeting children is cleverly designed to make them covet toys that are cheap to produce.
As adults we can only try our best to dissuade young people from making choices that lead to environmental destruction, but before they are old enough to make those choices, we must choose for them. There is no conscionable reason to ever give a child a plastic toy.
By taking the Play Without Plastic pledge, members commit to refrain from giving any child under four years old a plastic plaything.
As our movement grows, and the children blessed to have enjoyed this plastic-free playscape mature, the talents, resources, imagination and good karma of its founding members will come together to creatively displace the plastic items that foul our economy and environment.
“Play is at once the most simple and most complex aspect of human behavior. This is true in the first regard because it comes so naturally and can be engaged in so readily, and in the second, due to its endless variations and myriad benefits.”
— Kristine Kubat, Play Without Plastic Founder