In today’s episode, we chat with Rebecca about why she feels so motivated to make an impact with toy waste. What the costs of the drive-thru, surprise toy, Loot Bag Toy culture really are, how COVID times have affected her business. How we as small business owners and consumers can better interact with upcyclers to create change. And why she feels so hopeful for the future.

If you want to learn more about Rebecca and Tiny Toy Co., purchase Re-Loot bags or hands-on learning activities. Visit tinytoyco.com.

Links from this episode

• Thanks to the Happy Meal, McDonald’s is the largest toy distributor in the world – via Considerable.com
• Harbourfront Centre Toronto
• Chopvalue – upcycling with chopsticks
• Plastic toy waste recycling with Terracycle

Episode Transcript

 

Jennifer Chua: Hello everyone and welcome you’re listening to cost of goods sold with Jennifer Myers Chua Episode One.

In today’s episode, we chat with Rebecca about why she feels so motivated to make an impact with toy waste. What the costs of the drive-thru, surprise toy, Loot Bag Toy culture really are, how COVID times have affected her business. How we as small business owners and consumers can better interact with upcyclers to create change. And why she feels so hopeful for the future.

This is cost of goods sold a podcast about why the products that make a difference are made. I’m your host Jennifer Myers Chua. And I believe you can use your business or purchasing choices to cause a change you’d like to see in the world. Join me for conversations with intentional entrepreneurs, thoughtful designers and responsible creators and curators building for profit companies that create positive social and environmental change.

This episode is brought to you by hip mommies carefully curated wholesale merchandise for modern retail if you want to stock your shelves with brands that are socially responsible and sustainable, or if you want to be a part of the collection that is delighting Canadian retail visit, hipmommies.ca 

One of the greatest joys of childhood is digging around a cereal box or opening a chocolate egg to find a surprise inside. And most of the time, what you find is tiny it’s made from colorful plastic. And while they bring so much delight in the moment, these play things have short lifespans. Quickly forgotten about or broken and pretty much impossible to recycle, essentially. They’re just destined for landfill.

And we’ll stopping this waste stream is the most ideal. It’s a huge challenge. McDonald’s for example includes more than 1.5 billion, tiny plastic toys in Happy Meals a year. It’s a lot. But there are some creative solutions to help give these tiny toys a second chance.  

Rebecca Saha: i just, started wanting to spread that message and that movement that there’s already enough. For almost everything we want to do. There’s already enough in the world around us.  We need someone who can see the value in it. And who is patient enough to collect it, curate it, sort it so that the other people who weren’t patient or weren’t able to see the potential in it can be helped to see the potential in it.

I’m joined today by Rebecca Saha. Rebecca founded a company called Tiny Toy Co. Where she collects unwanted toy bits and repurposes them into upcycled educational kits. Rebecca has seen firsthand how effective these little toys can be when used as language, resources, for example.  But she’s also seen just how many toys are dropped off at her door from well-meaning declutters.

Rebecca has been in education for nearly 20 years. Many of those years she was also a librarian and this year with virtual learning she’s back to teaching her favorite grade.

I’m teaching online and I’m back in kindergarten.  And I have to say that,  doing it from my Tiny Toy Co. space at home has really brought the two halves of my life together in a way that’s really exciting.  It’s amazing to them that, I’m connected to toys, that I’m excited about toys and that I can share with them ways of tapping into play and toys for learning. You should see the look on their faces, they think that’s pretty cool.

Jennifer Chua: Growing up in Toronto’s Cabbagetown neighborhood in the 1970s, her memories of childhood include hours spent outside playing with skipping ropes and roller skates and bicycles. She’s happy to see this emphasis on outdoor play, having its resurgence. And there was no shortage of toy stores and consumerism in Toronto at that time. Her mom fought hard for the Cabbage Patch Kid that Christmas and the must have toys were a thing of her childhood for sure. The one toy that does stand out as a favorite in Rebecca’s memory  was the classic Fisher-Price corn popper. Which her parents did not love nearly as much. She says that most of her time she spent playing with found non toy materials.

Rebecca Saha:  We played with sticks and bricks and, and abandoned tires  in my neighborhood. And and you used our imaginations, so. My imagination was my biggest toy. I would say.

Jennifer Chua: Rebecca was highly influenced by her dad. A simple guy. She calls him. He came from Europe during the second world war and was practical, thoughtful. He would repurpose something before buying new. Her father saved and reuse things. Labeling old, glass, jars, and sorting and storing knick-knacks. This appealed to young Rebecca and she appreciated the simplicity.

Rebecca teaches kindergarten from her Tiny Toy Co. Space. A large room in her basement, lined with floor to ceiling shelving and bins and bins of carefully sorted colorful toys. Her father would be proud. Rebecca collects these. You’ll hear them called loose parts or toy debris. They’re everything from tiny toys, marker lids, PlayDoh containers, abandoned game pieces, marbles, things like that. She mostly receives them through donations and then begins the painstaking process of sanitizing disposing of broken or unusable parts, and beginning to categorize them. When she’s collected enough of one thing, marbles, for example. She’ll create a new toy from those parts. There might be an educational card or resources added in. And she draws on all of her expertise and early literacy practices as a teacher. To create new experiences from forgotten toys. Or open-ended brain building, learning sparks. That are then sent to be enjoyed in a new home.

Rebecca Saha:  I’ve been a teacher for a lot longer than I’ve been an entrepreneur and my early literacy practice as a teacher,  I have always used toys in a very particular way. We pull from toys to represent sounds or represent ideas. And that’s because little people are concrete learners and they like to have their hands on stuff and it connects the ideas with their,  kinesthetic learning. It just, it, just works for young people to have their hands on stuff for learning.

Children don’t benefit from excess. And I noticed as a teacher of young people and, and a parent myself, that kids were engaging with things much more successfully, much more independently, and in a much deeper way when they weren’t overwhelmed. And so I started to learn that pairing things down makes them more powerful.

And so, having a toy shelf or a shelf in the classroom with space between each item helps the child engage with all of those items. Whereas a bin of. debris  to rifle through is much less engaging. And again, that, that theme of simplicity of keeping things  separate, clear, clean lines, well labeled just,  resonated with me, but I also saw succeeding with kids.

Jennifer Chua: So why did you choose to make your impact with toys specifically? So if you were interested in all of these things, curation, education, why toys specifically?

Rebecca Saha: My first go at the  entrepreneurial life was around kids clothes. And I had  a business before, which I sold to my then partner because I wanted to do this instead. And started realizing that kids toys and clothes went together in terms of, of marketing potential. But I was having all the fun in choosing the toys, and staging the toys, and shooting the toys  in my photography set. And that when my voice came out most clearly in our social media, for example, or talking with customers it was always me saying, Oh, let me show you how to use this. Let me show you how to use this toy or this bundle of toys or this, this toy as an activity for learning.  My passion for, for education and for play started bubbling up to the surface in a way that was more engaging. When I started talking about, toys and about learning through play and even though I think that shopping secondhand for clothes is still essential and that’s still how I dress myself and my family that wasn’t where my passion was in terms of my business.  And so I let that one go to someone who’s passion it was.  Textile waste is a huge a huge fight. And but that’s somebody else’s fight. You know, my passion is, is in toys and and, education.

Jennifer Chua: So, do you remember the moment that you actually came up with the idea for Tiny Toy Co.? When you had the idea for this business in particular

Rebecca Saha:  I’ve always been a yard sale girl, a thrift store girl. I’ve always been someone who who created language kits and language tools for myself and for my own teaching in that way. What was happening for me was I was scrounging together language kits from little pieces and for my own teaching practice, and thinking to myself,  Oh my goodness, I see this in a, in an educational toy store and Oh, look made in China. Somewhere, someone is printing, by the thousands, these tiny lady bugs for their L activity bin. Meanwhile I just stepped on a plastic ladybug in my, in my playroom and a plastic ladle and a  plastic, lemon and all kinds of other things. And so. It, it literally came from like an, not a “Aha!” moment,, but an Owwwww. I stepped on Lego again, moment.   All the stuff under my feet could fill the need of all the stuff that I wanted in my toolkit as a teacher. And, you know, my environmentalism goes way, way back before Tiny Toy Co. Before parenting.  I’ve always been interested in looking for more sustainable ways of living.

Jennifer Chua: So like most people that have a pretty decent idea in modern times, Rebecca took to Facebook to see if this business idea would resonate with her friends and family. It didn’t take her very long before she realized that, “Hey, this could actually work.” 

Rebecca Saha: So there was a Facebook post. I got the idea, right. I launched a Facebook page and I said, Hey.  do you have any like little toys under your couch that you might’ve stepped on? Do you want to send them to me and I’ll make stuff from them? And cause I have this idea and it just, all of a sudden it went viral. And I’ve never, I mean, I’ve been on social media a long time, nothing I’ve said nothing I’ve said has ever gone viral before this. And all of a sudden I had people from Israel and, and , all over the world, but Australia is crazy for this idea. It turns out. All around the world, people were reaching out to me saying, where are you? Like, I didn’t even think anyone would be. listening beyond the people who follow me and knew me. And so I didn’t even mention, Oh yeah, I’m in Toronto, Canada, because in my mind it was like a, it was a local thing that I was planning and the global response was just massive.

The bags and bags of toys that we are collecting for upcycling are tiny are,  the size of your fist or smaller. We’re not talking Barbie dream houses and ride-on vehicles, we’re talking about,  individual magnetic letters, individual marbles and dice and game pieces and yes McDonald’s toys. And while the toys that look like something you can name, the representational toys. So tiny carrots, a tiny purse, those are useful in a language capacity, and those get funneled into educational activities or teaching sets for teachers or speech language pathologists. The McDonald’s toys are not useful in that capacity by in large. And not only are there so many of them, but they come with multiple parts and those parts get separated. So not only do we get bags and bags of McDonald’s toys, we get shooter toys with no ammo. We get spinner toys with no spinner. And, so the patience in what I do is, collecting them corralling them and, and painstakingly pairing the parts back up together.

Jennifer Chua: Rebecca quickly identified that one of the places that most plastic toys get handed out, is in Loot Bags. Those tiny little bags, full of treats and toys handed out at children’s birthday parties.  

Rebecca Saha: Until we change the Loot Bag trend, what can we do with the plethora of cheap Loot Bag toys and, and drive through toys because absolutely we need to work on two tracks. We need to stop that practice. We need to lobby McDonald’s. We need to let Swiss chalet know that we can bring our own crayons.  All of these restaurant fueled toys need to be stopped at the corporate level, but we also need to do something creative with the ones that are already here. And that was a bright bulb that went off for me about a year ago. So I invented the Re-Loot Bag and I sanitize them all and  group them by theme and put in a mission statement. I call it so that, you’re not only sending your party guests home with things that are fun, spinning tops and, shooting toys, and bouncing balls. But you’re also sending home a message that you’ve made a conscious decision to shop differently, to think differently about waste. And that you’d love it if they did too. So two, two tracks, right? I want people thinking big, big picture, and I want people getting creative with the “for now.”

Jennifer Chua: Where do you think these toys are going? So if parents aren’t sending them to you and you’re not repurposing them, where do you think these toys are ending up?

Rebecca Saha: the garbage. Absolutely. They are. Absolutely there. Or you’re dropping them off at, at your local big name, thrift store who has a dumpster out back. And who is looking at the bag, getting overwhelmed by the volume of it. And some portion of it, more than you’d like to think, is probably going in the dumpster. That out of sight, out of mind feeling that you, you dropped it off so you can feel good about that. That’s something that we all need need to think about as well,  how things exit our house should be as conscious as how things enter our house. And that’s the cycle. That’s the circle that you want to that you want to connect. We want to make conscious choices as consumers and we want to be conscious declutters. If you’re so good to just get it out. Just, just pull up the dumpster and just get it out. And you know, that, that cathartic feeling of the big clean-out the sweep and onto a bag is It is cathartic. I feel it too. We, I think we all feel it. But  there’s no away and that’s what, that’s what I always said to my kids. You talk about throw it away. There’s no away, right. Even when we pour something down the drain, We, I didn’t want that juice. I’m going to pour it down the drain. There’s no away, right. That juice is going through the pipes and into with some filtration. Sure. But, but into the Lake and, and when you pour something on the ground, there’s no away. It’s filtered into the water table, carried, to the Lake. We need to change our, our thinking about how we throw things away.

Jennifer Chua: I wanted to touch on something that on your website, you say that reduce reuse, recycle is a prioritized list. Could you explain that?

Rebecca Saha: People get very excited that they’ve recycled things. They they’re proud that their bin is overflowing with things they’ve recycled or set aside for recycling. Not only are we learning more and more about the fact that municipal recycling programs aren’t as successful as we wish they were. The fact that you’ve put it in your blue bin at the curb, doesn’t actually mean it’s going to be turned into some nifty product with no impact. But even if it is, there’s an impact, right? Everything that is produced from recycled materials is produced in a factory, which requires electric equipment. And  human power hours of labor, and energy to keep the lights on, and It has a carbon footprint as it shipped from one location to another and big trucks, cross country. So recycling is a huge factory undertaking. It’s a huge mechanical undertaking that uses power and creates pollution. So if I reuse a bottle, instead of sending it to be crushed, processed, made into something new. If I, if I instead find a reuse for that bottle,  I’ve removed it from that process, and given it a second life with no energy. From an electric standpoint and a pollution standpoint, it didn’t have to drive anywhere on a big truck and didn’t involve a factory. So that’s why reusing is better than recycling. Reduction is really the, the ultimate though. As proud as I am to help the people who send me their toys for upcycling. I wish they wouldn’t buy so many next time,  if they don’t have that companion piece of, of buying less next time, because they’ve learned to be conscious about it, then this will just go on. It would just continue. If this business dwindled from lack of need, I would celebrate. And I would do something else creative with my time and my brain. This is a business born of need, based on a problem that we have as a culture, as a consumer culture. And if we can change our culture, I will do a happy dance.

Jennifer Chua: Running a small business is not for the faint of heart at the best of times. But as an environmentalist. Seeing things like this massive quantity of toy debris. It can be really overwhelming. And Rebecca hasn’t been without struggle. There has been cost to her personal life as well. 

Rebecca Saha:  I’m not a hoarder by nature, but this business has turned me into a bit of a hoarder. Right. I don’t turn it away. So when the bags and the bags in the bags come, I smile and I say, thank you. And I store the bags and the bags and the bags until I can work my way through them. And  COVID has taken my volunteer crews, so they’re stacking up. So I think absolutely it’s put a strain on, on my family and my marriage in that regard.

It also is hugely labor intensive. As much as  the raw materials are free to me,  the amount of labor and time and mental labor that, that doing what I do takes is extreme. I will find one marble today. I will find two marbles tomorrow. Oh look, five marbles next week. And those marbles will accumulate and accumulate and accumulate in a jar. And when there’s a jar full of marbles, yes, I will resell that jar full of marbles and, and with instructions on how to play marbles and they’ll get a new life. But imagine doing that with each and every type of toy, it takes a huge amount of space and it takes a huge amount of time.

Jennifer Chua:  When you started going down this road, so you started collecting the toys and you started sorting them and you started creating these educational kits. Was there ever a moment where you stopped and you said, Hmm. I feel really proud. Like, is there one moment where you felt really, really proud of what you had accomplished?

Rebecca Saha: Yes. Yes. For me as a kid who grew up in Toronto and with an educator, mom, and who went to school in Toronto and who now teaches in Toronto when Harbourfront came calling, that was a super proud moment for me because they are the the pinnacle of, of education done right. And When they were interested in engaging me to to be part of their festival. Harborfront for me was was a huge moment to realize that that the people that I admire admired me back. And and I would say that that is starting to happen a little bit within my own school board now, too. Which is makes me proud also to have my administrators saying to me, why is that you behind? I, Oh, I just made the connection. Wow. Can we, can we figure something out? Can you do a workshop? Can you do some professional development? You know, that makes me proud too.

One of the most exciting people for me to work with is kindergarten teachers and, and DCEs the workshops that I’ve loved the most are sharing my actual Activities with educators to use in their classroom. So to show you how to use this, this sort of toy debris to teach adjectives, to teach conceptual thinking to to teach early literacy skills, early numeracy skills, sorting counting and, and all kinds of different problem solving and thinking skills. Not just related to the waste reduction message, although that’s always, always ever present message. I never miss an opportunity to talk about it with children, but showing educators how to how to set up hands-on play-based learning and how to see toy debris in, in, through the loose parts lens that’s so popular in education right now. It’s really it’s really empowering, spreading that message and, and getting these activities into classrooms.

What COVID has taken from Tiny Toy Co.  Is involving the kids in what I call , kid powered solutions to plastic pollution. At the, like at the heart of Tiny Toy Co. Is getting the kids hands on this stuff. Going into schools and community groups and, doing my booth at Harborfront every year where I’d get kids hands in the mix and I get them not just sorting the toys and talking about how this, this waste got generated and what role they had in that. Getting them, talking about making conscious choices at, at the drive-through. But also getting them engaged in how they can turn their own toy debris off their own playroom floor, into fun activities. And inspiring them to to see their own junk differently. So to rethink junk and to reimagine the junk that they already have.

That’s at the heart of what I’m doing too. That’s the educational piece that needs to happen is, we need to help our kids generation do better, do differently, see the world differently and,  be a different kind of consumer.

Jennifer Chua: We just mentioned COVID we are in COVID times, how has COVID effected your business? Has there been anything monumental?

Rebecca Saha: The biggest effect that COVID has had is, well twofold,  I guess .One is it.has robbed us of our volunteer involvement.  I’m a super, super responsible person. I’m a rule follower at my core. And so if there’s a health regulation, you can bet I’m adhering to it both personally and professionally, because that’s just how I’m wired. I’m not involving volunteers at this time. I’m not having kids in the space. I’m not having community volunteers in this space. And so that’s just chugging us right down in terms of efficiency. But it’s also dried up temporarily. I promise our workshop. Wing, right. I’m not going into schools. I’m not  having kids hands in the, in the toys and the materials  in the way that Is an essential part of what I do. So I’m excited for those to come back. You know, all the, the, the minor stuff, like sanitizing, the toys that’s that was happening anyway. The toys are quarantined 30 days before even I touch them. And then they’re washed as, you know, as fits the, like the material. So they’re either run through the dishwasher or they’re sprayed with an alcohol mist. So in terms of like those kinds of COVID measures, wearing a mask and cleaning things. No problem. Those are, those are small measures that were happening anyway. The big losses temporarily are the people, connecting With the kids and connecting with the the community of volunteers who are interested from a from a waste management angle.

Jennifer Chua:  Is there any other way that you use Tiny Toy Co. to affect social change?

Rebecca Saha: I’m starting more and more to If you, if you want to call it giving away, but just to give away ideas to parents online of how to use what you already have at home. And, you know, from a business perspective, that’s maybe not smart because there’s no way to, there’s no way to monetize that or, or, or reap the rewards of that. But. You know, gosh, I don’t care that much. I just, I just really want people to get clever and think about how to turn what they already have into something great, and how to not buy more. Just don’t.

Jennifer Chua: So if someone was inspired by your story or inspired by anything, the circular economy and they wanted to start a conscious toy business, is there anything that you can think of that might trip them up and make them want to quit? Like, is there any roadblock you think they might face.

 Rebecca Saha:  Anything that has done consciously, it’s going to be more expensive. And and I know you have experienced with this as an entrepreneur and, and anyone who’s running a, a consciously fueled small business knows that if you care about the means of production, if you care about the people who are producing things, if you want  fair and equitable renumeration for labor, these things cost money.

And so.  As an entrepreneur, we’re constantly working against the, the, like the Amazon culture of people wanting a deal, people wanting free shipping people, wanting something for, for nothing. And getting excited when something, you know, like, woo. It costs next to nothing. And if something costs next to nothing, that that should be a red flag that something’s wrong. I understand that that COVID has made money tight from consumer’s perspective, but from an entrepreneur’s perspective I would say that anyone who is wanting to be really conscious about the the ethical origins of what they, of what they sell is going to fight that fight. of you know, the consumer desire for low prices and and the high cost of ethical production.

What I did when I, when I sat out was to try to reach the the thrift store. Audience, the thrift store lovers like myself who want things secondhand for maybe environmental reasons or maybe financial reasons, but who who expect it to be  yard sale priced well, or dollar store price for that matter, but who, who expect things to be cheaper because they’re second hand and. As I have lived with the labor involved in what I’m doing, I’ve realized that it’s much more akin to what you might find on Etsy or craft market. I mean, when you, when you look at the amount of labor, the hours and hours of meticulous attention to detail and labor. That goes into any one product that I, that I,  curate and sell. It’s much more similar to,  a hand stitched handcrafted, something or other, and, and should have been premium priced  to reflect that that amount of labor and care rather than Bargain priced because it’s second hand.

Jennifer Chua: Amazon culture. It’s worth the conversation. Consumers now expect free shipping and free returns. And they’re not conscious perhaps of what happens to those returns once they return them. It’s a big fight that a lot of businesses are going through trying to educate the consumer that a lot of the time, those returns, those brand new goods. If you ordered three, cause you wanted to see which one works best and you can return it for free. Those goods are usually being disposed of.  Everything. Has to end up somewhere. And Rebecca has been educating children. About this concept for a long time, particularly in these workshops. And when she’s interacting with the children, she feels that they are being impacted positively. And she’s very hopeful for the future

Rebecca Saha: When I see I mean, not just, not just about consumerism, about everything, when I, when I talk to my own teens about everything from racial equality to gender to, I mean, the way they see the world is different from our generation and, and in so many ways more  positive, I think.  Kids care about the environment they do. And , they’re, mad. That we’ve wrecked it for them. And and they know that they know that big things need to change.  Kid activism is the start of, of a grown-up activism, you know?

There are things that I’d like to do with the business. For example, Terra cycle. One of the things that I’m very conscious of is what happens to the pieces that I can’t use, the pieces that are sharp or, or truly snapped and broken and, and no longer resemble anything. They’re just toy plastic. It’s important to me. To the extent that I can afford it, to have that mechanically recycled and rigid plastic recycling even through the amazing, amazing TerraCycle Canada is expensive and it’s expensive because it’s laborious. And meticulous and time consuming and energy consuming. And so for me to be able to afford to do that with my unusables unre-usables takes a lot of money. And so if I had priced things at a premium  knowing that that the proceeds are,  helping this happen for the environment. That should have been my messaging from day one. And instead of trying to be all things to all people.

Jennifer Chua: That’s actually a really good learning is there anything else you’d like to add to this conversation or the ongoing conversation around upcycling?

Rebecca Saha: I had a a reflection that came to me this week. While I was excited about another circular economy business that I saw on my Facebook feed. And I thought, Oh, yes, someone’s finally doing something with all those use chopsticks.   And they’re doing. Great creative, amazing things with these use chopsticks. They’re sanitizing them and turning them into countertops and all kinds of other things. And I thought this is amazing. The, the number of upcycling businesses that are reclaiming materials for new purposes. But then I looked at the comment thread and it occurred to me that the public has in some ways missed, missed the point. All of the comments were Oh, I have six years chopsticks how can I get them to you? Everybody was, was willing and excited to get rid of their used stuff and not feel bad about it. Nobody was asking, Hey, how can I get a cutting board? Or I would love to use your product and my new renovation, show me the specs for the, the different countertop models. There’s this presumption that the way to help these businesses, that the way to help the movement. It is to contribute your, your junk, contribute your stuff. And while that’s important, too, the best way that you can help them movement is to buy the end product until we shop differently. Nothing’s going to change  if you give me your bags and bags of toy junk, and you feel great about the fact that it’s going to be reused instead of going to landfill. That’s amazing. But if you follow that by heading to the toy store or the dollar store one or the takeout lane and refilling it up, refilling your playroom with the same junk, with the same stuff at the same volume, then then you haven’t interrupted the cycle, you’ve perpetuated the cycle. And so I think what’s really important for for the movement, the reuse movement, the upcycling movement to succeed is for people to support it financially at the at the other end. You know, people need to purchase things differently as well as contributing to the, to the intake of the circular businesses.

Jennifer Chua: So how did that feel when that happened? When all of a sudden you’re getting all of this attention for something that is still just a little idea in the back of your mind.

Rebecca Saha: Even if people are, are just. Inspired by it and thinking about it and attracted to it. Now it’s percolating for them.  And my little baby idea, it’s going to percolate with maybe thousands of people and give them ideas. And even though I’m only having an impact in, in my small neck of the woods, maybe they’ll do something, something similar where they are and or something related or, something that, that sparks passion for them around reduction and together that’s the only way we’re going to have an impact. That in lobbying McDonald’s no,  I mean that quite seriously, right? Like as tirelessly as we work as a small business entrepreneurs and as individuals in our communities I think we all know that that, that labor is a drop in the bucket to the lobbying of government and the lobbying of corporation that needs to happen for, for global impact for the environment.

The world needs less stuff and the world needs more creativity.  We need more creativity for problem solving for thinking our way out of this mess that we’ve got ourselves in that we’ve got our planet in. We, we need more human connection. We need more brain power connection, more collaboration, and we need less stuff. One spatula will do. Yeah. And then just, just stop. Okay.

Jennifer Chua:  If you want to learn more about Rebecca and Tiny Toy Co., purchase Re-Loot bags or hands-on learning activities. Visit tinytoyco.com. While you’re there. Rebecca is taking donations to help raise funds for toy waste recycling with Terracycle.  It’s a really worthy cause. You can follow along with Rebecca on her mission to reduce plastic waste on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter @tinytoyco. Thanks for listening.