Your Pool Toys End up in Landfills. These Options Are Way More Sustainable.
These beach and pool accessories are built to last.
Diana Koenigberg/Courtesy of Sun + Water
Sun + Water tubes
We love a hot pink flamingo floatie bobbing in the chlorine waters of a Palm Springs pool as much as the next person. But it doesn’t look so cute and hilarious when it’s sitting in a pile of trash alongside deflated pizza tubes and unicorns.
Plastic rafts, degrading noodles, broken umbrellas, even inflatable tubs—they can all start making their way toward the garbage bin, and ultimately a landfill, by the end of the summer. Many are not recyclable due to a material called polyvinyl chloride, otherwise known as PVC, a plastic that you’ve likely seen in pipes at Home Depot but can also be found in many of these flexible pool accessories.
Courtesy of Willow + Sim
One Australian couple was so fed up with the plastic piling up that they started a company called Ploys – Creative Concepts in Disguise, specifically designed to recycle inflatable pool toys and transform them into bags and purses. “We just couldn’t throw away all this plastic, knowing that PVC is one of the worst products to decompose; taking up to … 1,000 years to disintegrate,” they write on their website.
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To get your summer started off on a more eco-friendly foot, we put together a list of ideas for more sustainable beach and pool accessories, from recycled timber umbrellas to shovels made out of bamboo fiber and cornstarch. Some companies will even recycle their products for you when you’re ready to throw them away.
Here, some of our favorite products that lend themselves to more sustainable summer fun.
Sustainable Summer Accessories
Orange Slides
Head out on summer adventures with comfort and ease thanks to Allbirds’ Sugar Sliders made in part from sugarcane.
Topanga Umbrella
A beachside classic, but make it sustainable. This Topanga Umbrella by Overexposed features a reclaimed wood pole and canopy made from recycled plastic bottles.
Sea-Green Tube
Sun + Water’s Sea-Green butyl rubber tube is wrapped in a removable cover topped with Sunbrella fabric. Instead of throwing away your old tubes, the company will recycle them for you.
Bamboo Kids Beach Toys
We love a set of beach toys made from bamboo fiber and cornstarch that are just as sturdy and much more environmentally friendly than plastic alternatives. Willow + Sim’s Bamboo Kids Beach Toys come in three colors.
