There are five floating islands on Earth - two in the Pacific Ocean, two in the Atlantic, and the other one in the Indian Ocean. Among them, the one in the north Pacific Ocean is 15 times bigger than South Korea. All these 'islands' are, actually, made up of plastic that we humans threw away in the past twenty years. We named them the Garbage Island, or the Garbage Soup, along with each ocean's name.
It might sound new or unfamiliar to you. However, people living in South Korea, Belgium, and Taiwan, are the ones who use the most plastic in the world. One plastic cup of coffee every morning, or delivery food in plastic containers are smothering marine lives.
What's interesting is that the number of plastic toys children throw away is also huge, though they might not seem many. They take up to 30 percent of all the plastic thrown away from households. The source of our children's happiness has become one of the major sources of pollution. Hyundai Motor Group aimed to make use of these plastic toys once again.
Most of the toys are made of more than one materials, which cannot be recycled.
Broken toys are not easy to mend. There is almost no one who does that as a job, and even if you find one, there is no guarantee that you could get the right parts you need for the toys. And many of them are made overseas, which makes it harder for you to fix your toys, so they end up getting thrown away.
If only we could fix those toys, we can reduce tons of plastic and save our environment. This is why HMG has been keeping an eye on these broken plastic toys. After they fix and sterilize the toys, they would bring them to a community center or those in need. This would help the environment and our neighbors at the same time.
HMG created an office for Green Move Workshop at Hyundai Anyang studio.
HMG collaborated with Community Chest of Korea and Elephant Factory, a social enterprise, to run the Green Move Workshop together. The Green Move Workshop was named after the 'Green Move', one of the social contributions called 'Six Moves' HMG has planned.
Green Move Workshop fixes and sterilizes donated or collected toys for those in need, or upcycles them for better use.
There are mainly three divisions at Green Move Workshop - repair, facility quarantine, and upcycling. Repairing toys for later use is the biggest project among them. The workshop started from daycare centers and toy rentals, where many of broken toys are, not from households.
Fixing toys alone can save the planet.
Speaking of why they started from there, Chae-Jin Lee, CEO of Green Move Workshop, shares his own experiences: "More than 20% of the toys they give you are broken. And since they can't do anything about them, they just put them aside. And they need to buy new toys. However, 80 percent of the broken ones can be fixed. This would worth tens of thousands of dollars every year. The better part is that we can use the money for kids, from buying new toys to repairing their homes."
If not fixable, they divide the toys into each part, depending on the color or material, and reuse them as renewable plastic.
Eun-Jeong Yi, head of Gyeonggi Suwon East Support Center for Childcare, is the biggest fan of the Green Move Workshop; "we have tons of broken toys in our toy library, but most of them were unable to be fixed. We think the Green Move Workshop will save a lot of our time and money. Besides, if they could even help other children in need, we cannot thank them enough."
Sanitizing is a must for the young kids with immature immune system.
The Green Move Workshop visits each daycare center or orphanage and sanitizes and disinfects the place first, then collects broken toys. After figuring out which toys can be repaired or not, they sort them into two groups; they fix the toys in one group and disassemble the ones in the other group. And they pack each repaired toy in a clean bag.
Plastic from these toys can also be used to educate children.
Chae-Jin Lee at first did not think this structure would help save our environment that much. To be honest, Lee simply did not want these broken toys to get wasted so easily. HMG, however, made Lee think about the environment as well. Lee says Green Move Workshop wouldn't be here if it were not for the work of HMG and Community Chest of Korea.
"HMG did a really thorough job on plastic waste from toys. Even I who have been working in this field for years could not imagine how much - 30 percent - these plastic toys would take up among the total amount of plastic waste. We need a chain network to effectively protect our environment. HMG did a very thoughtful job to make things work from the bottom. This business is truly worthwhile."
They pack each repaired, disintected toy in a clean bag.
Repaired toys would go to daycare centers or orphanages, for children in need. HMG aims to create such a network by June next year, decreasing plastic waste by 10 tons.
Green Move Workshop plans to make wrapping paper using natural substances such as corn or sugarcane, to make them easily biodegraded underground. Even though they are currently using plastic wrapping paper for a relatively long time, still, they would take hundreds of years to be degraded. Natural wrapping paper, on the other hand, would take only six months to get completely degraded.
Waste plastic can be recycled into single-material products.
There are two kinds of 'upcycled' products; one is single-material toys. Children's toys are mostly made up of materials safe enough for young kids to play with, and yet they become 'waste' and burned as they are thrown away because they are made with more than two different kinds of materials.
Green Move Workshop makes toys using only one substance - plastic - so that they can be easily recycled, or, sometimes, upcycled.
Reusable plastic can be converted into great tiles for interior designing.
The second is for other industrial purposes, not for toys. The true upcycling, according to Green Move Workshop, is to make things suitable for multiple industries. The first project was to use plastic from broken toys to make the LED heat sink. The prototype is currently going under government inspection, and the workshop is also working on developing tables and floor materials using toy plastic.
Green Move Workshop also plans to teach children how to protect our environment. They will publish children's book talking about recycling and run classes at orphanages or daycare centers. They also aim to run a family-friendly program, disassembling toys to learn physics.
Toys should not be the cause of pollution.
The best way to decrease waste is just to use things as long as they last. However, the current market makes people keep buying toys and easily throw them away. HMG decided to break this through. They will simply keep repairing the broken toys so that we could keep using them. We look forward to seeing how Green Move Workshop will do its job.
Photo. Seung-Woo Lee, Yoon-sik Kim
