My guest today is Jim Barber, a Managing Partner at MWB Toy, LLC, a startup toy company based in Danbury, CT. We’ll be talking about how MWB Toy is developing a line of toxic-free toys under the Luke’s Toy Factory brand name. Luke is Jim’s son, and the toy designer. These toys will be made in the USA with sustainable and safe materials. With 85% of the world’s toys produced in China and a slew of quality & safety issues in recent years, Luke’s Toy Factory set out to create sustainable, competitively priced toys made in the US. These toys will utilize organic by-products of industrial farming and industrial manufacturing operations, and never use paint!. Moreover, by eliminating overseas shipping from China they cut down on their carbon footprint and reduce pollution that results from transportation.. Jim is the owner of Jim Barber Studio, Inc, a well known still life photography studio that counts over 100 of the Fortune 500 companies as clients. His work has won many awards for advertising and annual report photography. He is also a judge of the ARC awards, the premier worldwide award competition for the annual report industry. Kickstarter project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lukesfty/ecotruck-made-from-safe-organic-materials-in-the-u
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Developing a Toxic-Free Toy
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Jim Barber
Date of Broadcast: May 19,2014
DEBRA: Hi! I am Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It’s Monday, May 19th 2014, beautiful summer day here in Clearwater, Florida.
I have to spend the weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina at the conference for Touchstone Essentials. I play commercials for their products everyday on this show and I talk about the 33 servings of broccoli and supplements or the zeolites that removes toxic chemicals from your body. Those all come from Touchstone Essentials.
I was just once again so impressed with this company. The conference was just so professionally done. They continue to have such outstanding products. People continue to have so many wins from taking them.
I just see people’s health improving. These are people that I’ve been promoting these products for two years. I’ve seen these people over this two-year period and I just see people’s health improving.
One of the things that I learned that was new that I didn’t know was that toxic chemicals in your cells can actually block the nutrition that you’re taking in from your food and your supplements. The toxic chemicals can block that nutrition from even coming into the cell. Nutrition needs to get into your cells in order for your body to be nourished.
By taking the Zeolite product called Pure Body and also then taking really pure supplements that are not made from food but made of food—just food and nothing but food–in the supplements—by doing that, you really nourish yourselves and you nourish every part of your body.
It was just so clear to me because I see other people, I see it in myself—I’ve been taking this for two years. And it was just another confirmation that I’m doing the right thing by doing it. I wrote on my book <em>Toxic Free</em> before this company even started. It’s been around for a little over two years.
But a few years ago, I wrote Toxic Free. And the conclusion I came to when I was writing that book was that one thing we should be doing, as I’ve been saying for more than 30 years, is remove the toxic chemicals from our homes. We’re at a point where what we need to do is remove the toxic chemicals from our bodies also. And we need to get better nutrition because our food supply just does not giving it to us.
So then along came Touchstone Essentials and they have these products that remove the toxic chemicals from your body and they give us superior nutrition. I just want to say that, once again, I went and I met with them. I know everybody in the company, I know everybody on the staff, I know the founder and I know all the executives. I am just so impressed with these products.
Give a listen when you hear these commercials and you might want to take a look at these products because if you’re concerned about your health, if you’re concerned about improving your health or <em>improving</em> your health, these are some products to be looking at. They are products I take and products that I recommend. They are doing something important because toxic chemicals, if you have toxic chemicals in your body, it’s going to impair your health in one way or another.
Anyway, that’s my commercial message for the moment.
Today, we’re going to be talking about toys. My guest is Jim Barber. He is a managing partner with MWB toy who is developing some toys through the brand Luke’s Toy Shop. I think I got that right, right? Luke’s Toy Factory, there!
My computer is down this morning, my internet. So I can’t actually go to my website. I have all these little notes on my screen. Okay, Luke’s Toy Factory.
The thing that’s different about this show, usually, I have on people who have already manufacturing products, and I’ll give you their website and you can go by them, what’s different about this one is that they are still in development and they are using the Kickstarter program to come up with money to go into manufacturing.
If you want to, you can go to their Kickstarter program and make a donation. This is what’s called crowd funding, some of you may be familiar with that. If you want to know more about it, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and the link to do that is right at the end of the description of the show.
DEBRA: Hi Jim! Thanks for being here.
JIM BARBER: Hi! Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. First, tell us how you got interested in this subject. What made you want to make toys?
JIM BARBER: Well, I tell you Debra. The thing is, my kids are actually grown. I’m past the age when they really paid a lot of attention to toys. Few years ago, I guess around 2009, we started hearing all these stories about some of the things that were in the paint coming from toys from China. I started looking at some of my kids’ toys, especially some of the toys that had been recalled, and I realize that I had some of these toys. When I really started looking, I found that 99% of the toys I had were made in China. When you really start looking on carefully, we start thinking what’s really in these toys.
JIM BARBER: I started doing some research just to be interested in what was going on. I started finding out that there are a lot of heavy metals in the paint. Lead is just one of the heavy metals that you find. You find arsenic, you find cadmium. There’s a whole range of things.
And then the other issue is with a lot of the wood, there’s formaldehyde in the ply wood.
So I started thinking, there’s got to be a better way to make these things.
And I read about this material that they’re using in decking. It’s called wood plastic composites. And what it is is they take a regular plastic and they replace part of it, 30% to 40% with saw dust.
So, what you have is 1) you’re taking away plastic and 2) you’re adding what was a waste product to this material so that it transforms it from being plastic to being a hybrid between the two. I thought, “Well, that might be a way to make the toys.” And then, I started doing more research and getting more deeply into the whole process.
DEBRA: Well, we talked before so I know that you were cleaning out your basement and you found these toys. Obviously, your children are grown and they’re not playing with them now. But you have stored some toys and you’re going through them and you’re looking at that. What was that moment like when you were looking at them and made this decision that was so powerful that you decided that you needed to make some toys?
JIM BARBER: Well see, one of the things—I don’t know if my kids are unique in this. But when it comes time to throw something out, it’s like, “Oh no, I don’t want to throw that out. You throw the other thing out, but don’t throw my stuff out.” Even though they’re grown, it’s like, “I want to keep all these toys.”
I guess the real surprise to me was that these were toys and toy companies that I trusted and that I knew their names. When I grew up as a kid – all these toys were the brand names we played with.
DEBRA: Right.
JIM BARBER: And I felt almost a sense of betrayal because when I started really researching this—you can go on the Consumer Products Safety Commission website and you can see all the recalls that are being done on these toys, it’s astonishing how many of these toys get recalled. I just…
DEBRA: And what are they get recalled for? What kinds of things?
JIM BARBER: Mostly, it’s mechanical issues, things will not be well-made, a lot of toys use screws and they use fastening devices.
The thing about the toy industry is it’s all about price. So, how do you get the price down? You cut quality.
DEBRA: We need to go to a break. But when we come back, we’ll talk about this more.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Jim Barber. He is developing toxic free, eco-friendly toys. We’ll talk to him more when we come back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Jim Barber of Luke’s Toy Factory. They’re developing toys that are toxic free and eco-friendly. We were just talking about how Jim found these toys he’s storing in his basement and said, “No, we’re not going to have those anymore,” and wanted to create something better.
And the way he’s financing those is with a Kickstarter campaign. If you’re interested in contributing to that, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and look for his show and at the end of the description is the link to his Kickstarter campaign which is quite long, which is why I’m not trying to describe it to you over the radio.
We were talking about—what were we taking about before the break? Anyway, let’s go on and just talk about the materials. Let’s talk about…
JIM BARBER: This idea, yeah.
DEBRA: Yes. Let’s talk about some of the materials that are used. You talked about them a little bit in your story, but let’s talk more about some of the toxic chemicals that are found commonly in toys.
JIM BARBER: Generally, you have to differentiate between wooden toys and plastic toys. The ways that most plastic toys are made, they’re made with relatively safe materials depending on what kind of additives are put in them.
Sometimes, you can put additives into the plastic to keep away things like molds or to make them less susceptible to sunlight, things like that. But for the most part, most toys are made out of material called the polypropylene, ABS, another one is HDPE. And all these are different kinds of plastics. For the most part…
DEBRA: But aren’t some made also out of PVC?
JIM BARBER: Yes. Anything that has a thin flexible feeling to it is probably made with PVC. There’s a lot of different ways to create a toy. One of the ideas and one of the things that PVC does well is that it conforms to a very thin mold. The more plastic you use, the more money it cost. PVC is a very popular product. PVC is not a particularly good plastic in my estimation. I’m not an expert on plastics.
DEBRA: Well, this is not a good plastic in other people’s estimations as well. In fact, Greenpeace for many years has had a campaign trying to get people to stop using PVC altogether. Because of its toxicity, they consider it to be the most toxic plastic on the planet. I would agree with that.
So, that’s one of the reasons here. One of the reasons why I was interested in having you on today is because so many toys are made of PVC which is a soft plastic. It’s outgassing carcinogenic fumes. Children are playing with that. And you’re offering an alternative to that.
I wish that toys were marked with very clear symbols or labels that would say, “This toy is PVC and this one’s made out of polypropylene which is less toxic, HDPE which is less toxic and ABS which is less toxic.” But we can’t tell the difference because the toys aren’t required to be labeled.
JIM BARBER: Well, it’s interesting because there are a lot of requirements for labeling for safety. All our toys have to be tested for safety. There isn’t a lot of labeling in terms of recycling. We’re hoping that in the future, of course, that changes.
One of the things we’re looking at is providing a recycling solution for these toys. If your kid outgrows the toy, you’re just going to throw it in the trash, we’ll take it back. We’re trying to keep people from just throwing things away.
A lot of people pass this on, but some people don’t. We live in a more throwaway society.
But the plastic that we’re using, what we’re trying to do is replace part of the plastic essentially with a saw dust. What they’ve done is they’ve develop these plastics that is a hybrid of wood and plastic, but can be injection molded, so that you can make toy. And somewhere between 30% and 40% at this point of the material is a benign wood flour. It’s a pine or oak, things like that.
It’s all about taking steps. I wish it could be a hundred percent recycled, but I’m having a hard time finding a source for recycled plastic where the source will certify to me that it’s safe. No one can say [inaudible 00:16:00] a can of insecticide.
DEBRA: Yeah. That was interesting that I saw. I think it was in your press release. Tell us a little bit more about that, about why recycled might not be non-toxic?
JIM BARBER: Well, a lot of it has to do with where do you get the material. If you get what’s called post-consumer waste, there’s very little control over what actually goes into that stream of plastics.
They have machines that can pull out the metals. They have different ways of separating things. But for the most part, you can’t really guard against the person who just happens to throw something in there and not looking at the bottom of the container and putting it in the wrong stream.
So, where most of the recycled plastic comes from for the kind of thing that I’m doing is what’s called post-industrial waste which means that you are at a factory. And the way the injection molding system work is there’s always some leftover bits of plastic. If you ever made little models where you open up the box and everything that’s all stuffed together on a one frame and you have to cut the little pieces off…
DEBRA: Yup, I remember that.
JIM BARBER: That’s the injection molding process worked.
DEBRA: We need to go to another break, but we’ll be right back. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Jim Barber. He’s developing some toxic free toys through a company called Luke’s Toy Factory.
He has a Kickstarter campaign which you can contribute to. Just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and you can see his show and URL for the Kickstarter campaign is right there at the end.
We’ll be right back to talk to more about toxic free toys.
They have a Kickstarter campaign. So they are not in production yet, but you can make a contribution to their Kickstarter campaign to make this happen. Just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and the URL for that will be there at the end of the description of the show.
So Jim, when you decided that you were going to make a toy that wasn’t toxic and didn’t come from China and everything was going to be in the US, how did you get started doing that? What was your first step?
JIM BARBER: Well, the first step was research. I like to learn things. I found that the first thing to do was talk to other people and find out what has been done in the past.
There is one company called Green Toys out in California that’s been doing this for a while. They‘re the inspiration for me. These are the people that they make their toys out of recycled milk bottles called HDPE material. They have differences on…
DEBRA: And that stands for, for our listeners who don’t know what that is, <em>High Density Polyethylene</em> which is very non-toxic.
JIM BARBER:That’s my understanding. I do a lot of research and what we tried to do was to identify sources of material that are the least toxic, the safest materials we can. There are resources for that. There are ways to identify that.
JIM BARBER: The big thing was I went to a trade show down in Florida where they had a—it was called the National Plastics Exposition. They had literally everybody in the whole business was there. I just ran from place to place saying, “Look, here’s what I want to do, give me some ideas.” I met some very interesting people and that kind of built on itself.
But I just kept doing a lot of research on the materials and trying to connect with as many people as I could with the idea that even though it’s something new, there have to be somebody out there who’s willing to try it.
And because the toy industry is gone from the United States, the people who are left here that are still in business basically don’t want to deal with it because it’s a low margin business. They’d rather work in medical, aerospace or things like that. Trying to get somebody to take a chance on this was one of the biggest problems.
But we kept at it and then I found a place here in Connecticut, a guy who was willing to give it a try. And I found a guy up in Massachusetts to do the tooling which is the expensive part of injection molding. I found some great resources with companies here in United States who were really trying to take plastics and make them more sustainable.
There’s a place out in Michigan that I’ve been talking to. They were one of the people that really worked very hard at trying to bring the science forward. Even though they didn’t really have a client for it, a lot of times, these guys, they don’t want to develop a product until someone comes to them says, “I want to make this product out of this”, and then they figure out how it works. This company said, “We’ll make the product, we’ll make the material. And then sell it to people.” We’re going to try to sell it to manufacturers which is how I came across them.
So, there are people here in the US who are looking forward and trying to see a day when we can, not necessarily eliminate plastics, but at least take away half of the material and replace it with organic materials that are not from the food stream.
DEBRA: I have a number of questions I want to ask you. I’m trying to figure out which one to say first. Here’s the first one. You’re talking about recycling. And the wood, the saw dust that you’re putting in, that’s recycled from. It comes from furniture manufacturing or something?
JIM BARBER: Furniture manufactures, yeah.
DEBRA: Right, okay. So now you have…
JIM BARBER: See the good thing about that—go ahead.
DEBRA: Well, tell me about the good thing about it is and then I’ll ask my question.
JIM BARBER: Well, the good thing is when you go to a furniture manufacture, you can identify where the material came from. You know what’s in there. You know that somebody didn’t throw something in there that shouldn’t been in there.
For instance, if you go back to China, one of the places that they get a lot of their wood for different things is wood pallets, shipping containers and things like that. You have no idea what might have spilled on them or where they got them from. The places that we’re identifying, it’s certified as safe.
DEBRA: It’s certified and safe. I haven’t heard that before. It actually goes through a certification process or they attest to that or how’d you know?
JIM BARBER: Yeah. Basically, what they do is they track the material. They put it in things called <em>gaylords</em> which is a size of shipping container and they ship it to the plastic manufacture. So, they know that it came from this factory on this particular production run and this was the material that they were using, whether it’s pine, oak or whatever. They can track what went into this material as oppose to saying, “Well, you know, we just took this bunch of old wood we had and ground it up.”
DEBRA: That’s a very different thing. I think that that’s an important point that I didn’t know anything about before until I talk to you. When you see “recycled” on the label, you know that that’s good for the environment because it’s reusing something that would’ve otherwise gone into a landfill or into the environment some place.
But from a toxic viewpoint, as you said, you really don’t know if it’s post-consumer or they’re just taking a lot of stuff you don’t know what else might be in there.
I remember when I was researching recycling some years ago, people thought that post-consumer was preferable to—what was the term that you used that comes from manufacture?
JIM BARBER: Post-industrial.
DEBRA: Post-industrial, yeah, that post-consumer was preferable to post-industrial because the post-industrial waste was just going back in the pot, so to speak, in the factory. But the post-consumer, was—
Oh, we need to go to break. I’ll finish this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And today we’re talking with my guest, Jim Barber of Luke’s Toy Factory about making toxic free toys. We’ll be right back.
= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Jim Barber from Luke’s Toy Factory and he’s making toxic free and eco-friendly toys. That’s what we’re talking about.
Before the break, we we’re talking about the difference between post-industrial and post-consumer waste and we got interrupted by the break. I’ll finish my sentence which is that if we’re looking at recycled plastics or recycled anything from a toxic point of view, if you have post-consumer waste, then there may be some unknown toxic chemicals in there because we don’t know what some consumer might have done—putting insecticide in a plastic bottle, wiped up some toxic spill with a paper or whatever it happens to be. There are a lot of opportunities for consumers to use toxic things.
And in a post-industrial situation, if its post-industrial recycled material, then they can say, “Here’s where this material came from,” and you can track if there have been toxic exposures or non-toxic exposures.
So now, here we have a toy that’s being manufactured and the manufacture can tell you that they know that this recycled material does not contain toxic stuff because it’s been track, the source is tracked and they know that it’s recycled from this type of wood from a furniture manufacturer.
I hope that when you get down to manufacturing and making these products available, that you’ll write all these stuff out, so that your customers know exactly where these excellent materials are coming from. It’s not so important for them to know the exact factory, but that they know that it’s post-industrial as opposed to post-consumer. That level of detail usually doesn’t get known.
JIM BARBER: Well, you’re absolutely correct about that. And that’s one of the things that we can do because we know where things were made, when they were made and how they were made.
One of the interesting things about the companies that are creating these materials for us to use, the first thing that I say to everybody that I talk to is the number one thing is safety. I don’t want to hurt kids. When my son, Luke, who designs the toys—the most important things is we will make sure that it’s safe so the parts have to be big enough you can choke on them.
But also, one of the great things about this is that when you color these things—because kids like bright colors—it’s done in the mold, inside the plastic, it’s encapsulated so there’s no surface paint. Kids like to chew on things, kids put things in their mouth. It’s one of their sensory inputs.
That’s one of the problems with getting a wooden toy that has surface paint on it. Sooner or later, that paint’s going to come off and you have to hope—
One of the stories that somebody told me was they were over in China and this was after the whole uproar over lead paint. They were supposedly getting very really clean, good paint. But the guy run out of certain color of paint, went in the back room and found some cans of paint and throw it into the machine. Well, it turned out to be lead paint. There’s no one there overseeing the operation.
And then, at night, when they clean the machines, they clean it with gasoline. So that’s another source of lead.
DEBRA: Here’s something that is I think a very important point and that is you, as a toy manufacturer, are thinking about all of these things, that you have this idea and this commitment to having things be safe. You can tell us a story and say, “Well, he used this toxic chemical, he used that toxic chemical.”
When you’re in the factory and you’re needing to manufacture something or specify how it gets manufactured, then you are not making those mistakes because you have an awareness of it and you care about it and you want to make sure that it’s done right.
A lot of toy manufactures don’t have that ethic. They just don’t have it. This is where consumers, when they’re looking for how do I make a decision, the thing to do is make a decision to buy a toy from someone like you who’s thinking about these things and acting upon them.
JIM BARBER: That goes back to the manufacture that we’re using too, this injection molder. You can go on to some of these shops—which I have gone in, I probably visited 20 or 30 different injection molders in trying to find somebody to work with—and some of these places are filthy. There’s literally cat litter under the machines, catching whatever’s dripping out of them. A lot of machines are hydraulic powered and there’s an oil mist on everything.
Again, the guy that I’m using is really clean. He has a scientific approach to things. It’s a little more expensive, but it’s worth it.
One thing is, I want to make sure that I’m doing the right thing for kids. What I really want to have happen from all these is I want other people to do exactly what I’m doing. I want them to bring their manufacturing back here, put Americans to work and make sure that the kids are safe.
DEBRA: What a great thing. I just want to applaud you because I wish that everybody would do that. I wish that everybody would think that way. It’s a very good thing to do.
I’m just going to make sure that I say again that you’re doing a Kickstarter campaign. And for people who agree with those, please go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find the link to his Kickstarter campaign and make a donation.
Why don’t you explain, Jim, how a Kickstarter campaign works?
JIM BARBER: Well, it’s an interesting process. It’s a cross between a donation and an actual sale because when you make a donation, there are different levels of rewards. You create what’s called rewards.
For instance with us, for $20, you can get one of the first production toys, the little firetruck that we’re making. And that includes shipping in the US. That’s a pretty good deal. You get a toy and have it ship to you.
The tradeoff you make is you’re not going to get it tomorrow. You’re going to get it when the Kickstarter program is finished and then we go into production.
And what we do is we make an estimate on when we will have the production done. We’re estimating August. To be safe, we’re saying September that we we’ll have all these things shipped out.
There’s different levels every rewards. You can get one truck, you can get three trucks. You can also make a donation and say no reward. I have some people that say, “Well, I don’t have kids, I don’t need the toy, but I like the idea.”
And you take a certain time period. In this case, we’re taking until June 8th. And you have to make your goal. Our goal is $15,000. We just broke $4000 now, so we’re getting there. We’re getting there, but we need all the help we can get.
The truck was actually called the Ecotruck. So, if you can’t find it easily, you could just go on Kicksarter.com and search for Ecotruck and you will find us.
They have a very interesting way of creating the campaigns. It’s a really nice process because it gives people who otherwise who wouldn’t have much of a chance—try hard to go to a bank and say, “I have this idea. And if you can just lend me the money, I can prove this idea can work,” well, the banks will say to you, “Come back when you have a product.” Whereas with Kickstart you can say, “I have this idea,” and people will look at it and say “Whoa, that’s a great idea. I’d like to see that happen.”
It’s a huge new thing. I think Kickstarter, in total, have raised over five billion dollars for various projects.
DEBRA: Yeah. It’s a pretty cool thing. If you go to their page, there’s a little video and then they have the different offers that says what you get if you pledge one dollar or more or five dollars or more. It tells you how many people have contributed in what category.
And the most—I think what was pledged $50 or more. No, the most pledged, $15, somewhere between $15 and $20. Second place right after that is $50 or more. I think that that’s great. I think that is showing a lot of support from what you’re doing.
You can get these little trucks in different colors. Yeah, I think it’s a great project. If you’re a parent or a grandparent—and it even shows the little pellets, the materials, the people and a whole explanation. There’s a lot of information here about what it is that they’re doing. Just great, great, great, great.
Well, we have to go. We’ve only got about 15 seconds left, so thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate what you’re doing. You’re listening to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!
