The 2022 edition of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas may have pulled off something extraordinary: Having more TVs in attendance than people.
Whether that’s literally true or not, the fact remains that even a skeletal CES will inevitably feature plenty of eye-popping new televisions that may or may not find their way into living rooms over the next few years. Heavy hitters like Sony, LG, and TCL all show up with their newest wares, and it’s worth your time to take a look at what’s coming down the line from the biggest names in TV manufacturing.
TV with the most futuristic-sounding display feature: Sony’s Quantum Dot OLED
Those dots are so quantum. Credit: Sony
OLED (or organic light-emitting diode) displays have been commonplace on CES show floors for years, as the lack of a backlight behind the entire display means OLED TVs can produce more gorgeous images than the LCD screen you probably have in your home. Sony went and combined OLED with quantum dots, adorably tiny light emitters, to theoretically produce even better image quality than a regular OLED display in the new Sony Master Series XR-A95K.
Available in 55 or 65 inches, the quantum dot OLED with a name that is not catchy at all is hoping to be the first of its kind to hit the market. Quantum dots have been part of non-OLED TVs for years (that’s what “QLED” refers to), but they’ve never been paired with an OLED screen before. This 4K/120Hz set with Google TV built in doesn’t have a price or release date yet, but don’t expect it to come cheap whenever it does launch.
Best-looking screen that will fit in a bedroom: 42-inch LG C2 OLED
42 inches of organic light-emitting goodness. Credit: LG
OLED displays are great, but they have two problems that can keep potential customers away: They’re expensive, and rarely smaller than 50 inches or so.
That’s not the case with the new LG C2, a 42-inch OLED that’s smaller than any OLED to come before it. The follow-up to last year’s very well regarded C1 model also comes in sizes ranging from 48 to 83 inches, but that 42-inch model is going to be clutch for those of us who want high-end gaming in a bedroom-friendly size. It’s a 4K set with a 120Hz refresh rate and an HDMI 2.1 port to go along with a better picture than you’re likely to find at that size. Here’s hoping it’s not too expensive.
Most absurdly huge TV that actually has a price tag on it: TCL 98-inch QLED
This image can’t possibly demonstrate how huge a 98-inch TV must be. Credit: TCL
Sometimes the only interesting thing about a TV is that it’s really big. There’s nothing wrong with that! Case in point: The TCL 98-inch Class XL set.
Unlike most other TVs on this list and many of them at CES in general, TCL was brave enough to put an actual price point on this 98-inch behemoth. It’ll run you $8,000, which honestly seems low for a QLED 4K set with a 120Hz refresh rate, hands-free voice control, WiFi 6, and four HDMI ports. Again: Just marvel at the size of that thing. Goodness gracious, what a beast. Hats off to you if you can fit that in your living room.
Best gaming features: Panasonic LZ2000
Best with a next-gen console. Credit: Panasonic
Panasonic’s LZ2000 TV comes in 55, 65, and 77 inches, but that’s not what makes it interesting. Nor is it the fact that it has a time of day sensor that can adjust the picture for different ambient room colors, or the speaker system that runs along the entire length of the TV for better sound. What really makes this TV sing is what it can do for gamers.
Panasonic built in handy features like an overlay that shows the current frame rate of what you’re playing, as well as the ability to adjust the dark portions of the screen for better visibility. Of course, it also goes all the way up to 120Hz for games that support it. There’s no price on this bad boy yet, but those who like gaming should keep an eye on it.
Best TV that isn’t a TV: Samsung Freestyle projector
TVs are so last year. Credit: Samsung
Lastly, something that isn’t really a TV, though it can act like one if you need it to. Samsung’s quirky Freestyle projector costs $899 and can rotate up to 180 degrees, projecting up a 100-inch image on any surface. Samsung even claims it’ll level the image out on an angled surface.
It’s also got access to smart TV apps so you can stream all your favorite shows and movies onto the kitchen ceiling, if that’s useful for whatever reason. It’s only about two pounds and sits on a flat surface, so you can throw it in a bag and take it with you on trips. On top of that, it’s compatible with portable USB-C chargers, making it possibly the most versatile projector out there.
Cadillac’s newest luxury EV will have the latest hands-free driving system from General Motors called Ultra Cruise.
At the CES technology show this week, GM revealed more details about the advanced driving assistant that improves on the existing Super Cruise system. Super Cruise (available in certain Cadillac and Chevy vehicles) only works on certain highways across the U.S. and Canada, but Ultra Cruise will cover city streets, rural areas, and eventually all paved roads. It will function in some ways like Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode, which is available on all types of roadways.
Ultra Cruise will make its first appearance in the upcoming Celestiq electric sedan in 2023. The upgraded driving system will have new hardware, including three chips from Qualcomm and light-sensing LiDAR. The steering wheel light strip already well known among Super Cruise users for its white, green, and red status indicators will also flash a new color: amber.
New hardware for Ultra Cruise. Credit: General Motors
Jason Ditman, chief engineer at GM, said in a call that the flashing amber light will indicate when the human driver needs to take over for Ultra Cruise and perform a complex maneuver on regular roads, like a traffic circle. He said the light bar on the steering wheel remains “the best way to communicate control.”
The driver monitoring system in Ultra Cruise has also been adjusted for city driving. Drivers won’t always be looking ahead like they do on the highway with Super Cruise, which issues a warning after drivers spend too long looking anywhere other than forward. The new system has to tolerate drivers’ natural tendency to look left when turning left, for example.
Another big change from Super Cruise is turning on the driver assistance mode. With Ultra Cruise you can set it to automatically engage once you start navigating on a route.
It’s still too early for GM to give pricing details, but Super Cruise is offered complimentary for three years. As many as 22 GM cars are expected to have Super Cruise compatibility by next year.
If reality has taught us anything in the last few years, it’s that satire is too subtle. The world is so much dumber than we can imagine in fiction.
In a move that makes you want to scream WHAT ARE WE EVEN DOING HERE, the Democrats and House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi decided to mark the year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection with a performance from the Hamilton cast. I wish I were joking.
Pelosi introduced Lin-Manuel Miranda, who talked about “strengthening democracy” and “finding a way forward together” before segueing into a taped performance of the song “Dear Theodosia” from the Broadway hit.
Here, watch it.
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In case it isn’t clear, this was at an official Congressional event marking that it had been a year since pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol building in a deadly attempt to overturn the presidential election results. So, a pretty serious day. And Democrats did this.
For those not terminally online, Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda have become shorthand references for the idea that Democrats like to present superficial progressivism while doing nothing actually progressive. This is especially true for Gen Z, among whom LMM is considered cringe, just in general. It’s kind of like if Pelosi rolled out a projector and played a scene from The West Wing to get everyone feeling nice and warm about democracy again.
Anyway, people online couldn’t believe how cringey and self-righteous the whole thing was.
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So sure, a year later, the lawmakers who helped this attempted coup have faced no consequences. And sure, the social spending bill long-promised by Democrats and President Joe Biden got shaved down then shelved indefinitely. Oh, and yes, we’re in Year 3 of a pandemic and the president’s advice for getting a test is… Google it.
But, hey, we’ve got this Hamilton performance to watch.
Recall: April 2020. The pandemic had just begun to settle in, and the quarantined population was beginning to miss some of its creature comforts.
Religious salon-goers were turning to at-home color kits for the first time in their lives, and the results were uh, less than fantastic. In the nearly two years since, they haven’t gotten much better. Enter: the Colorsonic, a hair dye magic wand that debuted at CES 2022.
The Colorsonic is a handheld device from L’Oreal that aims to make the at-home hair coloring process less messy and more consistent. The wand-like device uses recyclable cartridges of dye and developer inserted into the handle, which it then mixes and distributes to the oscillating nozzle. Users simply brush the Colorsonic over their hair like they would any comb, and the dye is deposited onto their tresses, which is later rinsed out. Any remaining dye can be saved for future touch ups.
“If you went to the supermarket in the 1960s, you would see box color kits that look very similar to what we’ve seen in 2021,” Guive Balooch, Global Head of Research and Innovation’s Tech Incubator at L’Oreal, told Mashable. “We wanted to solve some of those age-old consumer needs around hair color. At home, what we see is that consumers think it’s messy to color hair at home, it takes a lot of time, [people are] nervous to do it at home. So we tried to invent something using technology that could enhance the formula and help people apply it better.”
To pick the perfect color for a specific hair history, the Colorsonic will also pair with a digital questionnaire and recommendation service, which asks for details like hair length, existing color, and gray coverage. Once a user chooses their color and appropriate amount, it ships directly to their home, paired with reusable gloves.
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While the pandemic has become more a part of everyday life, the demand for DIY beauty hasn’t waned. “L’Oreal started with hair color 110 years ago, and we hope now with technology we can bring it into the future and make people’s lives easier, especially these days when everyone is trying to get more and more services at home,” siad Balooch.
For those looking to return to the salon experience, L’Oreal also launched the Coloright, an AI-based diagnostic tool that scans hair for porosity, gray percentage, and other advanced elements that hair professionals can use to properly color hair.
After scanning, the device determines a custom dye “recipe” to achieve the desired look, and the user can also virtually try-on the color with a connected iPad. The Coloright diagnostic tool can be paired with an additional device to actually create the color recipe, or salon professionals can choose to use their own supplies to achieve the look.
The two new hair tech products are expected to launch to consumers in 2023, and L’Oreal did not provide pricing information for either product.
These latest debuts come after a history of innovative beauty tech from L’Oreal, which consistently launches both personal use beauty tech products and professional tools. At CES 2020, L’Oreal introduced the Perso, a personalized skincare dispenser and analyzer that also went on to power the Rouge Sur Mesure device for custom lipstick. At CES 2021, a sustainable showerhead for salons called the Watersaver made its arrival.
Looking forward, Balooch expects to continue expanding L’Oreal’s roster of beauty tech devices. The company is looking to focus on wellness in beauty by incorporating research on how hormones, environmental factors, sleep, and nutrition may affect skincare. In addition, it is exploring how tech can be used for makeup application, hoping to help more people create the beauty looks they desire despite their individual skill levels.
Deltec Homes has built more than 2,000 disaster-proof homes. They’re engineered to withstand high winds and have already been put to the test against some of the most severe hurricanes.
UPDATE: Jan. 6, 2022, 4:05 p.m. EST This story has been updated to reflect current sale prices and availability.
We’ve compiled the best deals on robot vacuums from brands like iRobot, Shark, and Ecovacs. Here are the ones to grab as of Jan. 6:
BUDGET PICK: The Eufy Robobvac G30 Verge maps your home in the app, which is rare for a vac under $150 — $149$349.99 (save $200)
BEST BUDGET ROOMBA: The entry-level Roomba i1 has better suction than the 600 series and is compatible with a self-empty dock — $499.99$649.99 (save $150)
BEST ROBOT VACUUM/MOP DEAL: The Ecovacs Deebot N8 Pro+ uses LiDAR to vacuum and mop, then empties the mess on its own — $529.99$799.99 (save $270)
Only three things are certain in life: Death, taxes, and a few days each month when you need to vacuum but just don’t have time. Whether you detest the chore or get a little bummed when you can’t have that satisfying dance with your Dyson, a robot vacuum is a lifesaver. Shop models on sale below.
Robot vacuums under $200:
Credit: Eufy
Our pick: Eufy G30 Verge
$149 at Walmart (save $200.99)
Why we like it
Well, it happened. The months-long run of the Roomba 692 at $177 has come to an end. If you’re robot vacuum shopping on a budget, consider the Eufy G30 Verge instead. It tackles your home with basic home mapping that’s less clumsy than most vacs at this range, which rely solely on obstacle sensors.
With the Roomba 692 and 694 back to full price, your best bet for the next-cheapest Roomba is the i1. (Less than $300 is still a steal coming from iRobot.) The i1 has 10 times the suction power of the 600 series Roombas, and is compatible with iRobot’s auto-empty dock.
More robot vacuums under $500
Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo U2 — $209.99 $249.99 (save $40)
Shark IQ Robot Vacuum with XL Self-Empty Base — $419.99 $599.99 (save $180)
Neato Robotics D8 — $349.99$599.99 (save $250)
Robot vacuums under $800
Credit: Neato
Our pick: Neato Robotics D10
$599 at Best Buy (save $200)
Why we like it
Give your corners some extra love with Neato’s newest flagship vac, the D10. Neato is known for taking on the flat edge like Roomba’s s9, but for about half the price. The LiDAR-powered D10 details along the walls and under kitchen appliances where side brushes can’t always reach well. It also has a HEPA filter.
Robot vacuums under $1,000
iRobot Roomba s9+ — $899$1,299.99 (save $400.99)
Robot vacuum and mop hybrids and dedicated robot mops
Credit: Ecovacs
Our pick: Ecovacs Deebot N8 Pro+
$529.99 at Amazon (save $270)
Why we like it:
The Deebot N8 Pro+ includes fundamental smart upgrades like LiDAR mapping and virtual boundaries for customizing its cleaning path down to specific rooms or areas. It also has sensors that avoid carpets while mopping and uses 3D obstacle detection to avoid small objects that cheaper vacs usually trip over.
More hybrids and robot mops on sale
Roborock E4 Robot Vacuum and Mop — $239.99$379.99 (save $140)
The control of an upright vacuum comes with its own type of satisfaction. But if you’re not one to classify cleaning as cathartic, a robot vacuum could erase that huge, agonizing task from of your chore list. (And did we mention the joy of having “first day clean” floors all the time?)
But whether robot vacuums are worth it or not comes with a caveat: It can’t be just any robot vacuum. A cheap robovac that doesn’t do the job right — scattering dust, bumping into walls, getting stuck on area rugs — might actually create more work for you.
What to consider when buying a robot vacuum
Suction power: A vacuum is the one purchase that you hope sucks a lot. Suction power is typically measured in Pascals (Pa), ranging between 600 Pa to 2,500 Pa. Stronger sucking will be needed to pick up heavier pieces of debris (be sure to set up a barrier around Legos) and to pull matted-down pet hair from rugs.
Floor type: Carpeting and high pile rugs will probably require stronger suction than hard floors, as well as special features like an extra-wide or self-cleaning brush roll to prevent hair from wrapping and clogging. Folks in homes with multiple floor types might consider a bigger, sturdier robot vacuum that can hurl itself and its wheels over mats, rugs, and transitions from carpet to hard floors.
Home layout: Every robot vacuum is equipped with sensors and drop detection. But if your home has lots of rooms, lots of turns, or lots of close-together furniture, you’ll have fewer navigation issues with an advanced model that uses intelligent mapping to remember exactly how your home is laid out, including labeling of specific rooms, mental notes of staircases, and ability to deploy zone cleaning.
Low-profile furniture: No one should have to be scared about what’s accumulated under their couch over the past year. A robot vacuum measuring three inches or less in height should be able to scoot under most low-hanging couches and beds.
Battery life and square footage: One of the main complaints people have about their robot vacuum is that it craps out in the middle of the floor. Larger spaces require more time to clean, and it all depends on how annoyed you’ll be if it only finishes a few rooms at a time. Average run times for the list below range between 90 and 150 minutes, which translate to about 500 and 2,600 square feet covered on one charge.
App control: WiFi-enabled robot vacuums can be synced with a smartphone app to control scheduling, manual start, cleaning settings, as well as telling your vac to make its rounds when you’re not home. Low-end models that don’t connect to WiFi will usually come with a separate remote. If you’re used to asking Alexa or Google to turn off the lights or tell you the weather, a model with voice integration will blend in nicely.
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Alia Shawkat, John Early, Meredith Hagner and John Reynolds break down all the backstory you should know before seeing the final season of Search Party.
Imagine a world… where people ride their own individual robo-pods without ever needing to set foot on the ground.
Hyundai presented such a world this week at the CES technology conference in Las Vegas. Of course in this future the cellphone screens are see-through.
The Korean carmaker announced its acquisition of the robotics company Boston Dynamics just before last year’s CES, and is clearly all-in on robots. This presentation previewed the company’s ideas for personal mobility, public transportation, and even public safety and health.
In under two minutes, Hyundai’s video presents an integrated system of transit robots where you can step into your single-seat robot pod in your living room, proceed to slide down the side of a residential building, and then link your pod up to a “shuttle” of fellow pods on the city streets. We then see the concept as it applies to hospital transportation, including an ambulance pod that links up with a modular, futuristic hospital. (We at Mashable sincerely hope the woman shown at the start of the video is OK by the end!)
But is Hyundai really the company that’s going to redefine mobility for the robot era? The Plug & Drive (PnD) modular robots were presented not as retail products, but as concepts that are part of Hyundai’s “Expanding Human Reach” idea. But it’s worth noting that Boston Dynamics’ Spot is a very real robo-dog that has learned choreographed dance moves, and that’s something you can actually buy.
On Wednesday, Razer debuted the Pro version of its Zephyr mask. The Razer Zephyr is a transparent mask with fans and two-way air filters that’s also equipped with customizable party-ready lighting. The Pro version adds voice amplification to the mask so everyone will be able to hear you when you say how much you love this song.
The Zephyr is based on a concept Razer showcased at CES 2021, when Covid-tech was all the rage. The actual version has straps that go around the head, not the ears as was envisioned for the concept. What with the lighting and the batteries and the fans, there was probably a bit too much hardware for ear straps.
These straps do the heavy lifting. Credit: Razer
The lighting on the outside of the mask changes colors, which you can control with an app. There are also interior lights to illuminate your face, so everyone can actually see through the transparent mask, which Razer says has an “anti-fog coating.”
Actually making the mask useful for preventing the spread of Covid requires changing out N95 filters, which Razer sells on its site.
The Zephyr is already available to buy for $99. The Zephyr Pro’s release date will be sometime in 2022, and Razer has not shared pricing information yet.
Major sex toy companies have made numerous highly visible and vocal attempts to go greenover the last decade-plus: As the industry woke up to the toxic effects of common toy materials, most makers overhauled their manufacturing, using body safe and often more environmentally sound practices and substances. To cut down on ancillary waste, most replaced battery-gobbling electric toys with rechargeable models, and developed slimmer toy packaging. A couple companies even tried to launch fully green-powered toys, like a hand-cranked vibrator and a solar-powered bullet vibe.
Yet even the most eco-conscious makers and retailers often gloss over the topic of toy disposal. At best, most stress that their toys are durable, and thus should last users years. But Carol Queen, a sexologist who works with the toy retail chain Good Vibrations, notes that this hand-waving just “kicks the can down the road.” This non-engagement is also rather conspicuous in light of the rapid growth of the sex toy industry — and with it toy waste, as users toss out old products in favor of new models, as well as new items they didn’t like as much as they hoped. Sex toys are a miniscule slice of overall consumer waste, but those made of plastic and electronic bits can be particularly environmentally devastating. It’s all but impossible to calculate the exact number of adult items that end up in landfills, but the rising tide of toy waste has some activists concerned.
“Holy shit, so many plastic sex toys are filling our landfills, polluting the ground,” says Annie Sprinkle, a pioneer of ecosexuality, a small but growing movement built around the eroticization of eco-consciousness.
This gap in the green sex conversation largely reflects the fact that it’s shockingly hard to recycle sex toys — especially in America, one of the epicenters of the adult industry but also a nation with a notoriously erratic and dysfunctional recycling system. So, even if retailers and makers want to give users responsible avenues for disposing of their old items, Queen says they often just can’t. A few firms have attempted to address these limitations in recent years; last fall actually witnessed a flurry of excitement about a new wave of supposedly easy-to-recycle, and in some cases even ostensibly biodegradable, toys. (VICE’s Helen Meriel Thomas dubbed it “the second coming” of eco-friendly sex toys.) But all of these solutions are flawed and limited at best, which leaves users to come up with creative ways to reduce their own sex toy waste.
Untouchable materials
Though some cheap, iffy sex toy materials, such as jelly-like plastics, are so low-grade that they cannot be broken down and reused, most modern toys are made of substances like ABS plastics, pure silicone, metal, glass, and even treated and sustainably-sourced hardwood that are in theory recyclable. In nations with robust recycling programs and laws, this theory translates well into practice; so long as you can get your toys to specialist recycling centers, they’ll be broken down into their elements, and their recyclable materials will hopefully get turned into new items, but that’s not always the case.
In 2007, the United Kingdom-based toy mega retailer Lovehoney actually launched a program, dubbed “Rabbit Amnesty” in honor of the era’s most popular type of vibrator, that helped British consumers avoid the hassle of finding specialty recyclers, and the (misplaced) shame of rolling up to one with an old vibrator in tow, by sending it to them instead. Lovehoney then consolidates these forsaken toys and brings them to proper disposal points. Over the last 15 years, a handful of similar convenient services have cropped up across the United Kingdom and Australia.
But in the United States, Queen explains, even a toy made solely of one eminently recyclable material “isn’t recyclable under ordinary conditions.” Most recyclers just don’t want anything to do with items that have been in contact with sexual fluids; they view them as a biohazard, and are under no legal obligation to process them. “Even while wearing protective gear, handling used sex toys is just unpleasant,” admits Jack Lamon of the Canadian retailer Come As You Are.
Many modern sex toys are also made of a mixture of materials, which most recyclers don’t want to deal with, as breaking them down is time- and labor-intensive and they are price-sensitive, for-profit operations. “The materials might only be worth, say, $3,” explains Alex Truelove, a recycling expert at the United States Public Interest Research Group, by way of a hypothetical yet all-too-plausible scenario. “That’s much less than the labor and transportation costs associated with separating and preparing them.”
Eco-conscious consumers can try to break toys down themselves, but Felicity of Phallophile Reviews, a prominent sex toy review site, notes that this is often a lot harder than you might expect. (Felicity only uses her first name when discussing sex toys publicly.) And many toys don’t actually list their specific materials, so it’s hard to know what elements of a toy you’ve taken the time and effort to break down might actually be recyclable in theory. America’s recycling system is also notoriously so fractious that even if you know that a toy or some of its broken-down elements are in theory recyclable, that doesn’t mean anyone in your area, much less your municipal recycling program (if you have one) will be set up to take it. Taking pains to ship materials off to a recycler in another state that can take them may also end up creating a carbon footprint in transit and processing that outweighs the green value of recycling them.
Even if you know your local recycling program processes the materials you’ve extracted from a toy, and sterilized to hell and back, you can’t just pop it into a blue bin and have faith that it will get recycled. As Truelove explains, American recycling relies heavily on automatic sorting systems to keep costs low, and those systems are usually built to process common and fairly standardized items, like aluminum cans or cardboard boxes. Sex toys are rare enough, and so diverse in form, that they’re not really on most recyclers’ radars, and thus aren’t accounted for in many automation systems. So, during sorting, toys or their deconstructed parts may still get diverted into a trash pile instead of processed for recycling. In the worst case (but all too common) scenarios, sorters may deem even sterilized toys or non-sortable toy elements contaminants, reject the entire bag or bin they’re in, and burn or rubbish it all.
“Right now, the term recyclable doesn’t really mean anything.”
So, Truelove cautions against putting too much stock in company hype about a product’s so-called recyclable materials. (A few sex toy makers and retailers do use this as a selling point.) Because in-theory recyclable products are often not recyclable or recycled in fact.
“Right now, the term recyclable doesn’t really mean anything,” Truelove stresses.
A good idea while it lasted
In the late aughts, ambitious toy companies and independent startups decided to get around these thorny issues by creating their own toy recycling programs, either for their defective or returned toys or for public use. The most ambitious of these projects would invite people from across the nation to sterilize and then send in their own toys. A dedicated team would sterilize them again and break them down into clearly identified materials and send large chunks to specialist recyclers who’d already guaranteed that they’d buy and process the raw goods in bulk. Even if they had to ship these materials far away, shipping one big hunk of matter rather than a flurry of individual toy bits would in theory minimize both environmental and capital costs.
However, when the adult industry reporter Lux Alptraum tried to follow up on these projects in 2013, she found that most of them never even got beyond the planning stages. And those that did manage to reach an operational stage were already defunct. Stefanie Iris Weiss, the author of ECO-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable, says that most of these projects fell short because they ran into “systemic recycling issues in their communities.”
Lamon suspects that even those that managed to bypass the limitations of recycling systems just couldn’t make their programs work economically. Come As You Are runs a program like this in Canada, sending ABS plastics to a commercial recycler, electronic waste to its local municipal processing system, and saving loads of silicone for an undisclosed future store project. Lamon says he’s never counted, but he estimates that the program gets about 20 items to recycle per week. However, he admits that they still have to throw a few of these toys out, because they’re made of unrecyclable materials. “It is amazing to me that in 2022 a lot of people actually still don’t know what their sex toys are made of. It’s actually pretty scary,” he said.
Lamon freely acknowledges that Come As You Are loses money on the project — which he is happy to do in the spirit of social-environmental service. But few businesses are willing to make that bottom line sacrifice. The adult retail giant Adam & Eve has in the past openly admitted that it can’t find an economically viable way to recycle returned toys, and thus throws tens of thousands into the trash every year. Lovehoney did not respond to a request for comment, but it’s possible that these practical limitations explain why they never expanded their Amnesty program to the States.
One of these programs, started in 2009 by the Portland-based retailer Scarlet Girl, is supposedly still operational — but reportedly only for its customers. Scarlet Girl did not reply to a request for comment and has in the past been cagey about its economic viability and logistical specifics.
Taylor Sparks of the eco-conscious retailer Organic Loven is still confident that someone will eventually make intra-industry recycling work, somehow. A few toy industry insiders Mashable spoke to speculated that if the adult world as a whole came together to develop one cohesive system, and perhaps subsidize it, they could develop a viable program with longevity.
However, Ben Foster of The Natural Love Company, an eco-focused sex toy firm, says that most consumers just don’t prioritize and demand recyclability in the same way they do body-safe and non-toxic materials, so the incentives just aren’t there for such a serious recycling push within the industry yet. Popular attitudes are changing, he acknowledged. However, they’re nowhere near the critical mass they’d need to reach in order to spur wide-scale waste management reform.
“As someone who lives in the southern U.S., I don’t see many people prioritizing recycling,” Felicity, the sex toy reviewer, agreed. “My apartment complex doesn’t even have recycling.”
“Also, there’s no public relations benefit in programs like this, because sex toy recycling sounds to the general public too much like ‘reselling used sex toys,'” says Lamon. That’s actually an issue in some shady corners of the adult industry, he stressed, so no one wants the association.
However, even a fully-functional, industry-wide program would still have severe limitations. Truelove points out that prices for recycled materials fluctuate wildly, so there’s no guarantee that any buyers the industry finds for its old toy materials will stick around for a meaningful amount of time. There’s also no guarantee that the folks they sell materials to won’t downcycle them into cheap items that cannot be recycled again, thus only slightly mitigating or deferring their environmental costs. Truelove notes that it can be hard for people offloading materials to tell what actually becomes of them — if they were actually recycled, or just dumped into a landfill at a later stage of the recycling process or turned into a costly new non-recyclable item, loaded with toxic additives.
Which, of course, is not ideal.
Go with the flow
Rather than attempt to invent and control an industry-specific recycling system, in recent years a few toy makers have started developing toys that attempt to work with the current state — and the constraints — of the American recycling system. Most of these toys are modular, and thus easy to break down for maximal recycling within the limits of a local system’s materials and sorting rules and standards. But since 2019, a handful of companies have also released toys made using biodegradable bioplastics — polymers created using things like corn starch rather than oil byproducts. This past spring, the sex tech company Womanizer drew a ton of press (including a writeup by Mashable) when it released the PREMIUM Eco, a toy made largely of bioplastic.
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“The development took around two years, because finding the right material wasn’t easy,” says Johanna Rief, Womanizer’s head of sexual empowerment and spokesperson.
However, modular toys only reduce some friction in recycling efforts; they don’t overcome hard limits within recycling systems. And bioplastics are notoriously controversial materials. Most of them only actually degrade in special industrial facilities; in nature most break down slowly into tiny microplastic bits, which are still often environmentally harmful even if they may not be as toxic as an oil-based material. Womanizer openly acknowledges that these facilities are still rare in the United States. However, Rief still advises disposing of the PREMIUM Eco “in the regular household recycling bin.”
This advice flies in the face of most recycling experts’ caution about not putting anything that your local recycling system can’t process into a bin, for fear of processors treating it like a contaminant and trashing the whole lot.
“Are bioplastics the perfect long-term solution” to sex toy waste and recyclability, Rief asked hypothetically. “Probably not until the government or companies build more of the needed special [processing] facilities. But it’s the best solution that we could come up with for now.”
Eco-conscious sex toy reviewers do not seem impressed with this solution, or other supposedly biodegradable toys. In a review of the Eco, a toy critic who goes by the name Miss Ruby wrote, “What is the point of touting this as ‘fully recyclable’ if none of your customers can do so?”
“What is the point of touting this as ‘fully recyclable’ if none of your customers can do so?”
“I think it’s a marketing tactic rather than an actual environmental commitment,” says Felicity.
Toward a greener, sexier future
Rief argues that solving the sex toy industry’s sticky end-of-life issues will require “the overall mindset of society regarding environmental issues and recycling” changing. Truelove agrees. He stresses that we need better laws and incentive structures to make sure that we actually can and do recycle as many in-theory recyclable materials as possible, and design products with their post-use fate in mind. But that sort of social and legal change will be a long, arduous process.
In the short term, everyone Mashable spoke to for this story agreed that the best thing the sex toy industry can do to tackle waste is… pretty much what it’s been doing for years now: Make toys durable. Cut back on excessive packaging and make shipping as efficient as possible. Limit waste in manufacturing processes and use as many sustainably recycled materials as possible in products. These mundane, often semi-invisible tweaks don’t attract much fanfare, but they make a real difference. “Recycling ranks rather low among possible actions to tackle waste and climate change,” argues Foster of The Natural Love Company. “Reduce and reuse take precedence.”
There’s a constant stream of new waste reduction initiatives flowing out of the adult industry at all times. Recently, for example, the British toy maker Love Not War started a program where it will attempt to repair any broken toy returned to it. This month, added Love Not War co-founder William Ranscombe, they’re also launching a new bullet vibe, The Maya, “made from 99 percent recycled aluminum,” one of the easiest to recycle, and most reliably recycled, materials out there.
“You do have to start somewhere,” Truelove says. “I appreciate companies that are trying.”
Consumers need to take a little ownership over and initiative in managing their own toy waste, too. Some have attempted to do so by participating in used toy exchange or resale programs among friends, in their local communities, or via online marketplaces. But as Mashable noted a few years back, the lack of regulation and transparency involved in most of these exchanges make them dicey at best if you don’t know and trust your used toy source.
The best thing most consumers can actually do is to simply buy fewer new sex toys. “Too many people buy sex toys they never use, or use once and then throw away,” Sprinkle, the ecosexual activist, points out. “Novelty is nice, but it doesn’t have to come in the form of an adult toy… If you have three sex toys you really love, that’s usually enough.” You can care for them well, keep them alive for years or decades, then replace them only when they are beyond any hope of repair.
