A big thank you for your interest in our toy exchange community! Please join us today in building this important parent resource. Your contribution really matters. It will help to get it going so families like yours can start exchanging toys and games as soon as possible. Just click on a Perk on the right sidebar of this page to contribute AND get a membership at the same time. And please, SPREAD THE WORD!
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A little bit about me
I live in Oakland, California and have two young children who LOVE toys. We have lots of them. Too many in my opinion. But my kids don't think so. They want more. And more. And more.
How do I satisfy my kids' insatiable appetite for fun new toys? And not spend thirty percent of our income doing it? Or constantly have to offload toys at the local donation station, never knowing whether they actually make it into the hands of other families, or maybe just end up in a landfill or floating around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
An online toy recycling program, of course, TOY-CYCLE.ORG.
How it works
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Imagine a sunny Saturday afternoon. A beautiful day to be outside. But you are diligently working to clear the clutter of toys from the living room floor, your kid's bedroom and the hall closet. I mean, seriously, you can barely see the floor! You locate toys your child hasn't played with since kindergarten. Never mind she is in 3rd grade now. What can you do? Get online and offer those toys up to your local TOY-CYCLE.ORG group. Another family wants them. You connect and make arrangements for that family to get the toys from you.
Now, imagine the following Saturday. You see a post for a toy or game your entire family would love. You respond to the posting family. Woohoo, it turns out they live just eight blocks from you! You go pick it up, bring it home, thrill your kids. No shipping, no packaging, no money changing hands.
When you sign up for TOY-CYCLE.ORG, you can try out the site for the first 60 days free. If it works for you, you'll be asked to pay a small annual membership fee of $12 to help defray the costs of the site's operation and maintenance. That's it. $12 a year. There is no charge for exchanging toys and games. Your home group will include families within about a five-mile radius of where you live. You can also sign up to get notifications from other nearby groups if you choose.
Sound great? I think so too. And I would like to ask for your help in making it happen.
You can contribute to this Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign AND at the same time get a 1-year, 3-year or even lifetime membership to TOY-CYCLE.ORG! As soon as a local user group launches in your location, you'll be able to start exchanging toys and games. Take a look at the Perks listed in the right sidebar of this page and select the one that works best for you.
Other Important Ways You Can Help
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Make a lot of NOISE about our campaign! Endorse it resoundingly. Make use of the sharing tools on this page. Like it. Share it. Pin it. Tweet it. Retweet it. Email it to your friends, family, moms' groups, dads' groups, co-workers, neighbors. Talk our campaign up at school drop-off and pick-up, at play-dates, while in line at the grocery store! Did I say make noise? MAKE NOISE! Crowdfunding takes a crowd. Please don't be shy. Share your enthusiasm.
Your support is truly appreciated. Thank you for working with me to make this vision a reality!
Use of Funds
Our small but exceedingly enthusiastic team has done a lot of legwork in dealing with the preliminaries. We have a development team ready to start building the site. We need $9,300 to get TOY-CYCLE.ORG up and running. We will use these funds for:
- Complete custom development of a community website that allows families to exchange used toys and games in locations across the country–$7,600
- Website design $700
- Fundamentals. That includes things like domain registration, site hosting, website launch and other administrative costs–$1,000
Toys and Our Environment
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Americans spend more than $20 billion on toys annually. That's a lot of toys and a lot of packaging. Fully one-third of municipal trash in the U.S. is packaging. While most of that is food packaging, a good percentage is toy packaging. We're talking about those unbelievably annoying plastic, mini-fortresses that are so hard to open, you've occasionally considered a jackhammer might be in order. Frequently toy packaging is made from plastics that have a low recycle rate, as not all municipalities include them in their recycling programs. So that plastic ends up in landfills where it slowly decomposes over a long period of time, hundreds, even thousands of years. Or even if the packaging is not plastic, it might be cardboard sourced from a rainforest in Indonesia, as Greenpeace discovered in 2011, when investigating the packaging Barbie dolls are sold in. All that packaging uses precious resources and has a tremendous ecological impact.
Toys and Our Health
Chemicals in the most common packaging plastics have been linked to numerous health problems including cancers, altered immune function, impaired brain and neurological functions, adult-onset diabetes, obesity, and others.
Want an easy way to say no to all the packaging? Give and get USED toys through TOY-CYCLE.ORG. It's the right choice.
Save money, reduce clutter, spare the earth.
FAQ
When will I be able to start exchanging toys on TOY-CYCLE.ORG? Our projected launch period is Spring of 2017. User groups throughout the US will be added continually thereafter. You will be able to exchange toys as soon as a user group is open in your location.
What types of toys can I find on TOY-CYCLE.ORG? The types of toys and games are really only limited by what other member families choose to give. You might find dolls, toy trucks, wooden blocks, rattles, riding toys, learning toys, board games for all ages, puzzles, card games, lego sets, action figures, stuffed animals, science sets, craft kits, poker chips, etc. If it's a toy or a game, it can be exchanged on TOY-CYCLE.ORG.
Are there different age groups? You will be able to filter by age. Age 0-3, Age 4-8 and Age 9 Up. You can select to receive notifications for as many age ranges as you choose.
How big are the user groups? While this will depend on the location, we will endeavor to keep the geographic size of the user group reasonably small so that families do not have to travel far to get toys and games. For a small town, this may mean just one user group. For a larger city or metropolitan area, there will be several user groups. As an example, in the San Francisco East Bay, there will be as many as a dozen user groups. At least two for Oakland, two for Berkeley, one for Emeryville, one for Alameda, one for San Leandro, one for Albany, one for El Cerrito, and so on.
Can I belong to more than one group? Your home group will be determined by the zip code of your residence address. You will be able to post toys and games to that group. You can receive notifications from as many groups as you choose. So for example, a Manhattan resident's home group may be Lower Manhattan. That member can choose to receive notifications and get toys from groups in Upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Hoboken and Jersy City, or any other nearby groups.
Will I get the 60-day free trial if I contribute now? If you choose one of the perks in the right sidebar, you will get an additional 60 days added to your annual membership. Your membership will begin once a user group has launched in your location.
If you have any other questions, please use the Ask a Question link near the top right side of this page or contact us at info@toy-cycle.org. We will respond to you directly and also update this FAQ section with any new questions and answers throughout the campaign.
Again THANK YOU for joining us in building this fantastic toy exchange community. We truly appreciate your contribution!
