I turn milk bottles INTO TOYS

Savvy mum Miranda is saving the world, one milk bottle at a time

-  Miranda Davidson

Watching as my boys, Teddy, three, and Jack, one, played with their toys on our lounge room floor, my heart sank.

Gone were the days of lovingly-crafted wooden toys that were passed down from generation to generation.

It's all made from plastic, I realised, and that didn't include the packaging or the plastic tubs that we stored them in. Not to mention they had such a short lifespan before breaking.

Where is all this plastic going to end up? I wondered.

I knew the answer only too well. Landfill.

It reminded me of a holiday my husband James, then 33, and I took to India in 2011, where we'd been staggered by the huge rubbish dumps full of water bottles.

Now, as parents, we were adding to the problem. Though we were passionate about recycling where we could, it just didn't seem like enough. What kind of world were my kids going to end up with if we all carried on like this?

That night after tucking the boys in, and when James got home from his job as an engineer, I turned to him.

'Did you know 26.8 million toys end up in landfill a year in Australia?" I asked, recounting the shocking statistic I'd read.

'I want to be able to tell the kids we did something good for the planet,' I continued. There must be something we can do.' 'Maybe there is,' James said.

He researched online for companies who produced toys made from recycled materials. While he found ones in the US and Europe that were doing just that, his search for Aussie businesses came up blank.

Could we create our own? I wondered.