Guide To Sustainable Wooden Toys In The UK
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Wooden toys may appear to be an eco-friendly choice, but they aren’t always. Just because a toy is made of wood doesn’t make it good. In this guide, I’ll share what really makes a toy eco-friendly, along with my favourite wooden toy brands in the UK.
Look into any parent of a young child’s home (including ours) and you’ll most likely find a good few plastic toys.
After all, they are cheap to make and can be cheap to buy. But plastic is far from fantastic. It’s made from fossil fuels, they can have a large carbon footprint.
That’s not the only issue, though. As plastic toys mostly can’t be recycled, broken or unwanted toys can also contribute to the amount of plastic ending up in landfills and oceans. And if that’s not enough of a headache, plastic toys can be full of toxins and can contain banned chemicals.
Wooden kids’ toys can be a better environmental choice. However, just because a toy is made from wood doesn’t necessarily make it sustainable. There are quite a few environmental considerations to be made. Here’s all you need to know, and some more sustainable brands to look for:
What to Look Out For When Buying Sustainable Wooden Toys
A toy made from wood can feel like a greener choice, but it can still be bad for forests and workers, full of nasty chemicals, glued together from dubious composites or painted with nasty paints, and shipped halfway around the world.
Here’s what to consider and look out for when buying sustainable wooden toys:
Secondhand Wooden Toys First
The most sustainable wooden toys are secondhand ones. Therefore, these should always be the ones that you consider buying first. The good news is that buying secondhand is the most budget-friendly way of buying them.
It’s not difficult to source good-quality second-hand wooden toys. Charity shops, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, and Oxfam Online are all great places to look. There are even wooden toy buy-and-sell groups on Facebook.
Look for Sustainable Certifications When Buying Wooden Toys
If you decide to buy new, then there are steps you can take to make sure the wooden toys you are buying are actually sustainable.
One of these steps is to look for external certification labels.
External certification means that the company’s toys and their business practices meet criteria that are assessed by an external non-profit organisation.
The Labels To Look For
Sustainable labels to look for when buying wooden toys include:
- FSC Certified. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) logo on wooden toys is your assurance that it is made with, or contains, forest-based materials from FSC-certified forests or reclaimed sources. Look specifically for labelling that says FSC 100%.
- BCorp Certified. This is where businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.
- Fairtrade Certified. This shows that the product has been certified to offer a better deal to the farmers and workers involved. It does not endorse an entire company’s business practices.
- Carbon Neutral Certified. This certifies that products that are either carbon neutral or the companies have purchased offsets to the value of their annual emissions.
- Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). This label allows customers and consumers to identify products from sustainably managed forests.
- EU Ecolabel. This is a label of environmental excellence that is awarded to products meeting high environmental standards throughout their life cycle. This covers the raw material extraction right through to its production, distribution, and disposal.
- Blue Angel Eco Label. This is an independent, German environmental label for products and services that have environmentally friendly aspects. Its goal is to inform consumers about environmentally friendly products.
It is extremely rare that wooden toy companies would hold all of these sustainable labels. Each certification is time-consuming to achieve and requires many systems to be in place. Each certification can also be expensive to achieve. Therefore, you just need to look for at least one eco-label when buying wooden toys.
Consider Where The Wood Comes From
As I mentioned, just because a product is made from wood doesn’t make it sustainable. Some wooden toys contribute to deforestation and illegal logging. This happens when companies use wood sourced from forests managed unsustainably. It’s especially problematic in environmentally sensitive areas such as the Amazon.
Toys made from unsustainably managed forests can result in biodiversity loss. It can also result in reduced ecosystem qualities and increased greenhouse gas emissions. The very things that you probably wanted to avoid by buying wooden toys.
Instead, when buying sustainable wooden toys, look for wood that is from sustainably managed forests. To do this, look for the FSC or PEFC logo.
Rubberwood is also a good choice when it comes to wooden kids’ toys. Rubberwood is a waste product from the latex industry, which used to be destroyed once the latex dried up. Alternatively, wood from European sources can be a more sustainable choice as it tends to be more strictly regulated.
Five Best Sustainable Wooden Toys Brands to Look Out For
If you’re looking to buy a special toy for a child in your life, then don’t feel overwhelmed. Here is a rundown of some of my favourite ethical and sustainable wooden toy brands available in the UK:
Janod
French toy brand Janod (available in the UK at Baby Mori) is on a mission to make its toys more sustainable.
By 2025, it wants to make 70% of its wooden and cardboard products with FSC-certified materials. Janod also favours water-based paints for younger children’s toys, tests all finishes for safety, and uses vegetable-based inks on puzzles and board games for easier recycling and biodegradability.
Packaging is another big focus. Since 2020, Janod has eliminated plastic from over 127 products, saving nearly a million plastic pieces a year. It hasn’t stopped there – the brand is continuing to develop recyclable and biodegradable alternatives.
And beyond materials, Janod partners with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to support biodiversity projects and fund reforestation programmes with schools.
Bigjigs
Bigjigs toys – available in the UK at Scandiborn – is another eco-friendly brand to know.
Many of its toys are made from rubberwood, a byproduct of latex production that would otherwise go to waste, giving new life to a valuable material. Bigjigs is also FSC-certified, ensuring the wood comes from responsibly managed forests.
Sustainability is built into their design process too: toys are created to be long-lasting, with minimal use of plastic, and packaging is made from 95% recycled cardboard printed with soy inks.
Bigjigs also has a handy spare parts service, so if any toys get broken or damaged, it’s easy to repair them.
Haba
Haba Toys (available in the UK at Amazon) makes high-quality, long-lasting, sustainable wooden toys, all with the PEFC seal of approval. All wooden toys are made in Germany from beech and birch wood, which is sourced from sustainably managed German forests.
Indigo Jamm
Indigo Jamm – available on Amazon – is a small company designing eco-friendly wooden toys in the UK. All of its factories have been visited and inspected by Indigo Jamm to ensure all toys are made in environmentally and socially responsible ways.
90% of its toys are made using rubberwood – a waste product from the latex industry. Indigo Jamm’s paints are also water-based for extra eco points.
Plan Toys
Finally, Plan Toys (available in the UK at Natural Baby Shower) makes ethical wooden toys for kids and babies that are designed to be fun, engaging, and educational. You’ll find cool and unique sets, like this English breakfast wooden toy set.
However, if it’s traditional you’re after then Plan Toys also has you covered. My kids have especially loved the Plan Toy toy town sets, with fun road and rail networks to build.
Plan Toys’ entire range is Fairtrade certified. All toys are also made in Thailand from sustainably sourced wood and painted with non-toxic dyes.
As well as solid wood toys, Plan Toys also makes toys from PlanWood. This is a byproduct of the sawdust that its factory produces. This ensures that nothing goes to waste. And if that wasn’t impressive enough, then Plan Toys has also developed its very own certified non-formaldehyde glue.
We’ve bought secondhand Plan Toys in the past and can testify that its toys are high quality and built to last.
More Sustainable Toys Inspiration
If you’re looking to buy a wooden toy as a gift, then do check out my ethical and eco-friendly gift ideas post for more inspiration.
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We adore wooden toys here too. They last forever and allow children to imagine their own ideas with them. We have log slices for stepping stones, and bridges, wooden rainbows and large rocker boards too. I think if you combine wood, natural wool and pottery you have everything you could possibly need.
We as parents of 3 and 6 year old also are addicted to wooden toys, they have some advantages over plastic toys: it stimulates child’s imaginations creativity more and are less flashy and soundy!
Oh yes, I’m for anything less noisy!!
I’m a huge fan of wooden toys, they look better as well :) I found these great wooden story dice for my friend’s daughter, I won’t put the link up but there’s an independent company which makes them.
They do! And so much more durable! Do send me the link to the dice, they sound great!