Episode 121
Matt Duncan
Matt Duncan is an educator and the author of the book called The Upcycled Toys Club. He and his business partner also started an online community by the same name.
Matt was visiting a friend who had recently moved out of the country and had downsized dramatically before the move. That downsizing included the toy collection of his young son as well. Matt offered to babysit for a bit and wanted to keep the child entertained. Before long, they had made all kinds of toys straight from the recycle box.
An idea was born.
The Upcycled Toys Club
Matt and the child had so much fun playing with toys that not only didn’t cost a penny but also prevented a bunch of material to end up at the landfill. As an educator, Matt immediately saw the potential to teach so many skills and an awareness of our impact on the environment through the fun activity of making toys.
Matt enlisted the help of several families to follow his directions and give him feedback and suggestions on what worked and what didn’t. It took Matt and the families he recruited one year to get the book, The Upcycled Toys Club finished and published. It is now available on Amazon and we would love for you to buy it through our affiliate link. Click here to purchase The Upcycle Toys Club
The book shows over 40 toys made from recycled materials, mostly from cardboard. It includes instructions on how to make 10 of them. Of course, by the time you have made 10, you can probably figure out how to make the rest by yourself.
But if you like to receive a full material list to know exactly what you need to make your upcycled toys, you can join The Upcycled Toys Club membership side. The monthly fee is $ 7 and the yearly fee is $ 69. It is so easy to spend much more than that buying toys for your children and I think they have more fun with the homemade creations.
Win a Membership to the Upcycled Toys Club
Yes, it is true! Matt offered us three full one-year memberships to ruffle off among you all, our listeners. How great is that!!
Here is what we want you to do to enter the drawing.
- Share our podcast with someone who does not know about us yet. If you can, take their phone and show them how to subscribe to the podcast. Again, if you can, take a selfie with the person you shared the podcast with. And let us know if we may use it to publish on Social Media. No problem if there is no photo.
- Send us an email at sustainablelivingpodcast@gmail.com
- Use Upcycle Toys Club Raffle as your subject
- You may share it any way you see fit, email, message, a phone call as long as you directly tell someone. A tweet is not enough.
- You may enter multiple times but only win one membership.
- We trust you that you did what you said you did.
- Entries must be in my inbox by midnight December 15, 2017.
The drawing will be on December 16th – possibly as a live Facebook or Instagram video. Possibly because I have been running into technical problems lately on these platforms.
A Word from Our Listeners
As a bonus, toward the end of the podcast, you hear from our listener Adam Perry, also known as the recycle guy. he lives in Australia and shares that even as a boy, he collected nails and screws and other finds to turn them into “machines.” Kids sure know how to have fun. Today, we might call that recycled art.
You Might Enjoy this Podcast
In the early days, we had San Diego artist Joan Green sharing her experience making art from recycled materials.
She works with children and with adults.
We hope this Podcast inspire you to give making art or toys from recycled materials a try!!
