Germany starts kids off 'green'

This is a GREAT idea: 'green,' environmentally sustainable toys for kids. I'd love some U.S. company — an American-based manufacturer, not just an American-incorporated Mattel or whatever — to start something similar. (It would have to be a U.S. company, because you know no Chinese manufacturer would do this.)

That said, in Germany as in America, there's a difference between what people will tell the general public, or even more, a pollster, and what they will actually do:
Robert von Goeben, co-founder of San Francisco-based Green Toys Inc., started making toys and other children's products from recycled milk jugs in 2008. Since then, he said, sales have exploded, recording 80 percent growth last year as demand for the toymaker's bright tugboats, pastel tea sets and colorful trucks surged.

"I think that the success of our company, shows that there is clearly a wide segment of the population that will pay a little more for environmentally friendly toys," said von Goeben, whose toys cost roughly a third more than comparable playthings made from conventional materials.

But Wild Toys, makers of animal figures and exploration sets, said their experience had shown otherwise.

The company, which sells mainly to zoos and museum shops, jumped on the green bandwagon two years ago, bringing out a line of purely organic plush animals, even making sure the cotton for the stuffing was grown with organic fertilizer. The toys cost about 25 percent more than their conventional counterparts.

"They are still sitting in our warehouse," said Wild Toys spokesman Valdemar Barde, adding that consumers are not yet ready to swallow the cost of going green in the toy box.

"We are still in that phase on toys that consumers say, 'Yes, we want to be green, but no, we don't want to pay for it."

But according to a survey conducted by the Nuremberg toy fair, roughly a third of consumers in Germany said they would pay 10 to 20 percent more for playthings made from sustainable products, also with an eye to their longevity.

Von Goeben notes the Chinese quality/safety concern, though, versus naysayers. And, in both Germany and America, the cost of "green" materials wouldn't add THAT much; the home manufacturing costs vs. Beijing would be half of the price difference, I'm sure. The flip side is that would be local, "green" jobs of a lower technical level than solar panels or something.