Play Bank:
From the course: Sustainability Studio, taught by Nathan Shedroff and Susan Gladwin
Nicole Trautsch
Jennifer Pechacek
Tim Bishop
Ingrid Dragotta
PlayBank's toy rental service prolongs the play life of toys by allowing children to check out toys and return them once they have exhausted their interest in the toy. In creating this play service, children get access to a wider variety of toys at a lower cost to their parents. It solves several issues around current toys:
- Parents feel their children have too many toys
- Many toys outlast a child's attention span and interest
- Parents often do not know what to do with old toys
- There are no existing alternatives to the trash can for broken and incomplete toys
PlayBank helps shift childrens' perceptions of ownership during a key developmental period in their lives. In building a service industry around toys that satisfies an impulsive desire for new toys to play with, PlayBank aims to show the value in service economies, and have a lasting impression on the wastefulness of current linear systems. PlayBank reduces the need to manufacture so many new toys and recycles and reuses toys to an optimal level.
PlayBank will accept new, used, broken and incomplete toys of all kinds. Following a sorting and inspection stage, broken and incomplete toys are fixed, if possible. Toys meeting Toy Loan criteria for toxicity and playability are cleaned and entered into the Mutual Fun, PlayBank's Toy Loan (rental) cycle, allowing the toys to live an extended life in the hands of many children. With an account, kids are allowed to take Play Loans (rentals) and make deposits (donations) into the Mutual Fun.
Toy Deposits that are beyond repair, or missing too many parts to be useful in their current state are booked as Toxic Assets and set aside for repurposing. PlayBank's Toxic Assets are given a final shot at continued life by the Adventure Capitalists, a team that promotes creative resourcefulness through toy building workshops and imaginative use for the toy materials. In the workshops, kids are encouraged to get creative while building Monstrous Hybrids, toys pieced together from miscellaneous, broken or lost parts from other toys. Toxic Asset value may also be captured by supplying sorted materials to recycling centers for use in products such as recylced plastic lumber.