Toys are meant to be shared
"In the modern days of consumerism, toys now have shorter product life cycle, contributing to plastic waste globally. This culture of excessiveness combined with Hong Kong’s pressing plastic crisis, calls for immediate action to combat this burning issue.”
Liz Wong, WEGCA 2020 Eco Star of China Winner
Partner (External Affairs), Growth Playground
After graduation, Liz Wong delved into the start up world when she joined different programs and competitions regarding start ups. In 2017, she had the chance to visit social enterprises in Taiwan. Having understood the importance of balancing profitability and social responsibility with the environment that we live in, she received some inspiration to start her own social enterprise.
ANEWTOYS is a social innovation project under the company GROWTH PLAYGROUND. It was founded in 2017. Their mission is to eliminate waste generation and plastic production in the toy industry by reducing, reusing, recycling and upcycling. One of the ways in which they aim to do so is to provide education to children to understand their objective, thus encouraging them to play a role in achieving a more sustainable environment.
Growth Playground is the first of its kind in Hong Kong, with an emphasis on turning recycled materials into teaching materials. With a strong belief in the power and impact of education, Liz and her team seek to cultivate creativity, problem solving and critical thinking in the next generation.
To date, they have collected nearly 40,000 piece of toys from household and organisations. More than 3000 eco-friendly toys were created by the participants of their DIY workshops.
The recent COVID pandemic has posed a huge challenge to Growth Playground as their core services and revenue were from offline workshops and trainings. Undeterred, they continued to display resilience and tenacity during this difficult time through creativity and innovation. One such measure taken was to introduce the sale of DIY toy-kits.