Burger King is giving up on free plastic toys for kids – when will others follow?

Plastic is the wonder product of the last century: durable, flexible, versatile and cheap to produce. It is also catnip to small children, to whom it can be used to sell anything from fast food to extravagantly priced magazines; typically a few sheets of newsprint with a tiny water pistol.

But if parents think they are expensive, so may children in the future. “These toys are nothing but future landfill; the legacy our children will inherit,” says Sian Sutherland, the co-founder of A Plastic Planet, a group campaigning against pollution. “Fast-fix plastic toys are used for moments and exist for centuries.”

Burger King is, at last, taking a stand against the plastic scourge by giving up on giving away small plastic toys. McDonald’s has demurred, while others in the retail, fast-food and children’s magazine industries are so far sitting on their hands.

The toys are not just clogging up bins, landfills and oceans but recycling machines, too. Joe Allen, the chief commercial officer at First Mile recycling company, says: “Many aren’t recyclable at all, and will contaminate the mixed recycled collections that many households are offered by the council,” he says. “Even the toys that are made from easily recyclable plastic are usually too small, or have components that are too small, to be picked up by conventional recycling-sorting machinery. Their size also causes potential problems with the machinery itself because of blockages.”

Julian Kirby, a campaigner with Friends of the Earth, says rules are needed to stem the plastic tide: “Companies [that give away the toys] must adopt a new business model that prioritises the safeguarding of the Earth’s limited resources for future generations – and if they won’t, the government should make them.”

However, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has no plans to ban or restrict the toys under incoming rules that will essentially remove straws, stirrers, cotton buds and other single-use plastics because technically the toys are meant for reuse. Allen disagrees. “These toys are usually made so cheaply that they don’t last long enough for reuse, and become single-use items – not the habits or attitudes we should be promoting to our children.”

Few companies other than Burger King seems willing to step up and take the imaginative leap necessary to find ways to attract children innately attracted to any sort of novelty. They will need to soon, says Solitaire Townsend of the Futerra consultancy. “Kids themselves are becoming aware of it,” she says, having run focus groups that found recycling was the environmental issue that grabbed children most immediately. “Children like recycling, and they are aware of waste. You’re not selling plastic, you’re selling fun, play and an experience – why does that have to be plastic? There’s a massive advantage for the company that works out how to sell that experience in a better way than badly moulded plastic. Give away books instead.”