Are wooden toys really more sustainable
The answer is yes, but less clearly than you would think. Life cycle studies also put wood last in one category.
One life cycle analysis found wooden toy cars had lower impact than plastic in 9 of 14 categories, with greenhouse gas emissions up to 77 percent lower. But the same study found wood had the highest acidification potential of all materials tested. Shipping distance and product lifespan can matter more than material.
“Wood is natural, therefore sustainable” is an easy sentence to write. Look at the life cycle studies and the picture gets messier, and in one place wood clearly loses.
Where wood wins
A 2025 analysis modelled replacing plastic toy cars with wooden ones in the Japanese market. Greenhouse gas emissions per toy could fall by 77 percent. Across 14 impact categories, wood came out lower in 9.
A separate analysis at DePaul University covering eight popular toys points the same way. Plastic makes up 90 percent of toy production and carries clearly higher emissions. Wooden products like Jenga produce far less.
Where wood loses
The same 2025 study has an uncomfortable result: wood had the highest acidification potential of every material tested. The load comes from forestry management and wood processing once they are included in the model.
The type of plastic matters too. ABS and PVC come out lower impact than nylon granulate. “Plastic” is not one thing.
Material is not the deciding factor
The studies agree on something else: shipping distance and product lifespan can outweigh material choice entirely.
And one number weighs more than all of them: roughly 80 percent of toys end up in landfill. Halving the carbon footprint of a product does not achieve much if the product is thrown away in two years.
Lifespan does not give the expected gap either. Life cycle data puts wooden toys at an average of 7.29 years and plastic at 6.17. Less than a year apart. The “lasts for generations” line is not supported by the average.
Coatings and glue are left out
This is the weak spot in the studies. Most of them say “wood” without modelling coatings, adhesives, MDF or plywood in detail. Yet a large share of wooden toys on the market are painted and glued, and some are pressed board underneath.
So the real impact of a product depends less on wood versus plastic and more on how that wood was processed.
What actually helps
The most defensible sustainability argument is not the material. It is the loop.
- Repairability. This is where wood genuinely wins. It can be sanded, glued and have parts replaced. That is the precondition for reuse.
- Secondhand. In the US, 22 percent of toys parents buy are secondhand. The French initiative Rejoué has kept more than 300 tonnes of toys out of waste since 2012.
- Fewer toys. The lowest impact toy is the one not bought. Strange thing for a toy brand to write, but true.
One more note: high resale value is not unique to wood. LEGO holds its value as well as anything, thanks to durability and a large secondhand market.
What we do
We make ours unpainted, with a single coat of natural oil on the surface. That reduces both the coating load and the uncertainty in any life cycle calculation.
Our timber comes from the Black Sea region, so the transport leg is short. We are looking into certified timber but we do not hold a chain of custody certificate yet, so we do not write “FSC certified” anywhere.
On repair we owe you a commitment: we want a system for replacing a broken part. We have not built it yet.
Faruk
I am building Masifico. I write these posts not as an expert but as someone who asked the same questions and wrote down what he found. If something here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it.
You might also like
What the CE mark on a toy actually tells you
CE is not a quality award. It is the manufacturer's own declaration. Knowing that changes how you read a label.
Which claims about wooden toys actually hold up
It feels strange to take apart the marketing for the thing we are about to sell. Four claims have solid research behind them. Six do not.