Sustainability Facts

Most people think of plastics as packaging, bottles or other household items. But get this, small stuffed toys often are actually made of the same source materials – synthetic fibres. And a recent Deloitte study found seven per cent of what’s in Canadian landfills are textiles made from those materials, like polyester, nylon, or acrylic.

Using 2018 data on Canadian waste generation, there’s about 500,000 tonnes of textile waste per year, or about 12 kg. or 26.4 lbs. per person. Within this, soft toys account for about one per cent of all textile waste categories by weight.  While that may sound marginal, it represents roughly 5,000 tonnes of stuffed toys disposed of annually.

Because most stuffed toys are made of polyester, they feed directly into Canada’s growing plastic waste problem. And the mountains of plastic waste continue to grow.

This type of textile waste is particularly interesting because they typically made of shell fabrics from 100% polyester and filled with Polyester Staple Fiber (PSF). That single-material composition seems promising for recycling, but in spite of research and start-up efforts, this isn’t happening so we’re way off from large-scale recycling efforts.

Recycling is still really hard, requires complex infrastructure, and high cost. And most companies in this space are working on clothing, not stuffed toys. So researchers looking at this topic find nearly one of every three soft toys that end up as waste are a like-new condition!

As the name implies, Patch Toys is a fix, aiming to divert these stuffed animals from becoming waste – or frankly, from sitting around your house unused because you’re not sure what to do with them anymore.