Little Toys

This step-by-step, well-illustrated manual helps children to prepare innovative toys from recycled material. It shows how low-cost, eco-friendly toys can be made from discarded tetrapacks, camera roll cases, soda straws and other junk. Apart from the enjoyment of making and playing with these toys, children derive pleasure by having contributed their bit in helping keep the environment clean.

Arvind Gupta after completing his electrical engineering from I.I.T., Kanpur in 1975, worked with TELCO for six years before taking to popularizing science. He has written eight books and presented over 50 films on science activities. He has received several honours, including the first National Award for Science Popularisation amongst children.

Introduction

It is an irony of modern consumerism that junk products are packed in tough cartons. While the frail human body consumes and digests the junk, it is the environment which has to grapple and reckon with the tough, non-biode-gradable waste. And, in the process, humans become sick and the environment decays.

Today we can see city parks littered and garbage dumps overflowing with tetrapacks-empty cartons of Frooti, Tree Top, Jumping Jack or Dhara. These packets are made with layers of different materials - plastic, aluminium and paper - all fused into one multi-walled laminate. We know that aluminium does not rust and plastics do not rot. These materials are energy-intensive and take a heavy toll of the environment, which helplessly chokes under the debris.

An attempt has been made in the book to show how some of this modern juck can be transformed into a high-efficiency pump, Frooti tetrapacks into measuring cylinders or butterflies, packets of cigarette into merry-go-rounds. These new raw materials offer innumerable possibility for use in low-cost science experiments and in making dynamic toys.

For five years children in Mirambika School made and tested these toys. Several of these toys have been serialized in the magazine Science Reporter.

I thank CAPART for the fellowship they gave which enabled me to collate these toys into a book.