Dolls and Their Environmental Impact

Sometimes I do worry about the amount of bubble wrap plastic that comes with my dolls. I've had a lot of dolls arrive at my home, so I've also had a lot of bubble wrap. While I try to recycle the bubble wrap when I ship things that are fragile, that does not keep me from wondering if there's an environmentally friendly alternative that protects dolls just as well during shipping.

The dolls themselves are plastic and since they are not bio-degradable, they are not environmentally friendly, although they can vary on how bad they are for the environment. It depends mostly on how they are produced of which I have hardly any knowledge.

 

I worry about shipping internationally and the impact it has on the environment. When I used to cast my own stuff, I made sure it didn't get in contact with water and I disposed of it properly (in Holland, chemical waste is collected seperately). What bugged me - even though I wanted to buy all the materials within Dutch borders - was that everything had to come from overseas. Even eyes, wigs and those tiny s-hooks; the reality is that there just isn't a big enough market for them in the Netherlands. You'll have to go to China to get large batches for an affordable price, but that's on the other side of the world.

So, it's not so much the plastic that worries me. It's the fuel we waste to get one pair of eyes from one side of this planet to the other.

 

If I discovered that a doll company was dumping harmful substances into the water supply or doing other shameful acts to harm the environment, I would stop buying from them; I wouldn't want to encourage the behaviour. I would take my business elsewhere, to a company that was producing their products responsibly. There are a ton of doll companies these days; my hobby would not be lacking if I ceased buying from one.

And, as Muisje and Silk have pointed out, emissions from shipping and waste from packing is also a concern produced by this hobby:

I think this is a little easier to remedy; participate in group orders run by someone as close to your location as possible or with your local friends. For packing; do we really need all that bubble wrap?! The pillows provide pretty good protection; a little bubble wrap around the hands, head and feet ought to be enough. Only use packing materials that can be recycled or are made from 100% post-consumer materials (cardboard, plastic). Make boxes sturdy enough that only one extra shipping layer is required; no foam peanuts, etc. Reduce, re-use, recycle.

 

Although the points made so far are good and sensible, there are still some things I would like to throw into this discussion ^^

Let's think the impact on environment caused by shipping, packaging etc. through to the bitter end.

Regarding the pair of eyes - it would be shipped together with other goods, which are shipped to the same destination anyways (regardless of you buying the pair of eyes or not). So the waste of fuel for additional small items is not really significant, it doesn't increase the weight of the airplane that much, while taking up space that would otherwise ne wasted if only big packages would be transported by this particular plane. There are hardly enough dolls sold that refraining from buying them would stop the planes from flying.

On the other hand, if we just leave out the air plane out, the could be a real benefit. Shipping by an actual ship, and not by an airplane, might probably reduce the fuel wasting more, since the amount of goods that can be transported by a ship in a single travel is much greater, and much less fuel is needed proportionally to the amount of the transported goods. But we would have to be ready to wait about 8 weeks longer on top of our usual waiting times. And PayPal might need a new policy >.>

Now to the packaging. Imagine a company using less bubble-tape, and having more pieces broken as a result. What would happen to them? Not only would they suffer financial loss, because people would be less inclined to buy from them, no, they would have to replace the broken things. Resulting in more financial loss, and, guess what - repeated shipping of the replacement parts, maybe even shipping of the broken parts back to them first. Hence more waste of fuel. And even more financial loss for the company, because we all know the shipping is not cheap. So I can see why a company prefers to use lots of additional, maybe not necessary packaging - which doesn't mean I approve. But I can see why.

On the other hand, an eco-friendly alternative to bubble-wrap would be wonderful. But the cost/price for this material has to be reasonable, or it won't be used - every company will think of its survival first, and seriously, I don't think I have the right to blame them for this. Because these are jobs of real-life people we are talking about, people who make their living by making our dolls.

 

resin is just a fancy word for plastic. resin used to be made from something coming from trees, but not anymore I believe. the material has been changed and so now it is more plastic than anything (logically).
on top of that, our resin kids travel via air. I also doubt planes are eco-friendly.

but I love my dolls too much to care .___. I'm going to hell. XD;

 

We buy a number of things every day that are not environmentally safe. I'm sure that video games, computers, batteries, and so many other things do not do the Earth any good. All we can do is look into things and make a judgement based on moral standings.

To me, if they're not dumping their waste everywhere and not hiring people and kids into horrible conditions, I'm fine with it.

I buy paints with cancer-causing chemicals in them. I have paint thinner by the bucket in my room. It all comes as part of being an artist... and I know these things are toxic, but it just comes as part of the process.

 

The eyes-example was just to illustrate the point I was trying to make. How much of the stuff you have at home(food, clothes, computers etc) was actually produced in your own country?
If I take food as an example: in Holland we breed pigs and sell the meat to Japan. We then import our own meat from Italy. Our clothes come from all over the world and the calculator next to my keyboard? It says "made in China".
Now, to produce dolls in the Netherlands I would have to get my products from all over, or buy them from a company who imports the resin from Asia, because what I need is not being produced here. I doubt it's any different if I wanted to make dolls in Germany, France or even the USA.

Sometimes goods (or doll-related items) are being produced in your own country, but it is just so much cheaper to get them from a country far away. We do have doll-eyes in Europe, but they are more expensive than the glass eyes you can get in China or South-Korea. And because the quality of those cheaper dolls really isn't that bad, why wouldn't you order them? Including shipping it still is a 'better' deal than buying one pair of eyes from a shop in Germany or the UK.

So no, the fuel wasted for one pair of eyes is not really significant. But our lifestyle and our economy are both very wasteful nonetheless and it does worry me, especially because we don't exactly have unlimited oil-reserves.

 

I've done a short search for environmentally friendly packaging materials. It's easy to find manufacturers for affordable carton boxes made of recycled paper or of wood from sustainable forestry, but packaging materials are a bit tricky. Cotton could be an alternative, but it's usually not produced in the most environmentally friendly way as there's usually a high pesticide use involved. Hemp is promoted as the environmentally friendly alternative to cotton, although it has a stigma and it's not dirt cheap.

There are alternatives, but they usually cost a bit more. The main question is are there enough people who are willing pay more for environmentally friendly alternatives for production and packaging to make it worthwhile. Domuya had an environmentally friendly doll line where they used eco-friendly products like boxes from recycled paper, although I have no idea if that contributed to their disappearance.

 

This, this, this!

The "no standards" part is soooooo very important! When there are no regulations (and there aren't when it comes to bjds) you can call your product whatever you like. As cyberspacegirl wrote, environmentally friendly resin calls itself that because it presumably is using less toxic vehicles to carry the resin. At least that is true of commercially available resins like Evergreen (don't know if any dolls are made of that particular resin, however) That doesn't make the resin "friendly" however-- that all depends on a host of factors, like distance materials are shipped, mining processes used for raw materials, carbon footprint, etc. The truth is that all man made products (and harvested natural and mineral resources) have an environmental impact. The question is, how much in comparison to other resins?

When companies are not forthcoming with that info, I have a tendency to deeply discount their rather nebulous claims. Until they provide proof, calling a doll environmentally friendly amounts to little more than a sales tactic to make people feel good about the doll they are purchasing.

And just for the record, I am married to an ecologist, drive a biodiesel car and live in one of the greenest cities in the US.

 

Pretty much.... This.

If you buy a doll from China there's already a fair chance that you're essentially supporting unethical practices, if you throw environmental concerns into the mix it's just going to become a hobby that is near impossible to support.

Basically.... I try not to think about it. It's not the best way to deal with it, but since I recycle, use public transport whenever possible (or carpool when it's not), and generally do whatever else I can to reduce my carbon footprint (I recently lost the bulb in my bedside lamp, even, and didn't replace it because I figured that if I didn't use it that would reduce our electrical usage by a ton, as I keep it on a LOT since I don't ever open my curtains so I don't inadvertently yellow my dolls, lol) I reckon that this hobby is worth the potential risks, at least in the short term.

 

Just to point out, scheduled passenger flights won't be stopping anytime soon! and they have a habit of selling available cargo space.
These things aren't shipped out on chartered flights, they use capacity that might otherwise be wasted space.

 

Sakuraharu beat me to this! Until there are actual standards and guidelines for what is considered "environmentally friendly" doll production, I wouldn't go out of my way to make sure that the doll I'm buying is evofriendly.