TIE puts that down to loopholes in the EU’s toy safety regime. While the bloc has the “strictest” rules on toy safety in the world, the lobby says, they don’t cover sellers from outside the EU when the sale is facilitated through an online marketplace.
“It’s getting worse because these platforms are becoming more and more popular,” Catherine Van Reeth, director general at TIE, told POLITICO. This wasn’t inherently a bad thing, she added, saying TIE’s members — which include LEGO, The Walt Disney Company, and Barbie-maker Mattel — also sell through online platforms.
“But the difference is that then you buy from a brand that you know and a brand that prioritizes safety, whereas we found that lots of toys that are being sold on online marketplaces are sold by third party sellers, often not from the EU, who don’t really care about safety.”
The data backs this up. In 2023, the EU was a net importer of toys from the rest of the world, according to Eurostat, with 80 percent coming from China. Nearly all toy chemical alerts issued in the EU in 2024 involved those coming from … you guessed it. China.
3. Eat, drink, travel and waste
Presents, travel and extravagant, meat-heavy meals: all common features of the festive season, and all an environmentalist’s nightmare. Let’s start with packaging waste. We’re talking thousands and thousands of meters of wrapping paper. According to the environmental non-profit Repak, Ireland generated about 97,000 tons of packaging waste at Christmas in 2022.
Then there’s wasted food. According to a study conducted by the French ecological transition agency ADEME in 2022, 83 percent of meals are prepared in excess quantities over the holidays.
