Her game rules: child safe and eco-friendly

Finding words and counting numbers in Jill Gaynor’s educational games are pretty simple tasks. ¶ Producing the games is more complicated. Gaynor, a 37-year-old educator-turned-entrepreneur, demands that her board games for ages 4 and up be printed with soy ink, on recycled paper, laminated with phthalate-free material and finished with a nontoxic, water-based varnish. ¶ “The same chemicals that are toxic for children are also harmful for the environment,” said Gaynor, an avid environmentalist who boasts of the organic carpet in her West Los Angeles office. “And when harmful things are released into the environment that hurts children.” ¶ Gaynor’s fledgling business, Beyond Learning, makes eco-friendly games designed for young children to familiarize themselves with basic words and counting while moving game pieces across a colorfully illustrated board.

Producing the games in environmentally friendly ways, Gaynor said, makes them good not only for children’s education, but for their health.

It’s also been good for business. A series of recalls last year revealed that a number of popular toys contained lead and other toxic materials. Since then, the use of safe materials in toys for young children has been a prominent concern for parents.

In September, a Detroit television station called Gaynor’s game Word Chase one of the “Hot New Safe Toys” parents could trust amid the millions being recalled. With the post-recall boost to her business and being featured in popular e-mail newsletters Daily Candy and Urban Baby, Gaynor sold $70,000 worth of her two games, Word Chase and Number Hunt in 2007.

Barely a year into producing the games, Gaynor supplies about 150 retailers nationwide, including Whole Foods Market Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc.’s online store.

At Three Cheeky Monkeys, a West Los Angeles toy store, the games have been selling well as more parents ask for toys that are safe, manager Ross Berman said.

“It’s really safe. It has no ink odors, and some games are just loaded with ink smell,” Berman said.

“People are very conscious, especially parents buying toys for kids that young, about things being safe,” said Alex Winston, owner of Hey Kookla, a gift shop in Santa Monica that sells Gaynor’s games.

And as it becomes important to parents, “going green” is a trend spreading across the industry, said Adrienne Citrin, spokeswoman for the Toy Industry Assn.

Long before last year’s recalls rattled the toy business, Gaynor experienced firsthand what toxic materials can do to young children.

When Gaynor was in college, a 5-year-old cousin named Colette Chuda died from a rare form of cancer called Wilms’ tumor. After years of searching for an explanation, the family came to the conclusion that while pregnant, Colette’s mother had been exposed to a pesticide that is known to increase the risk for the tumor.

“It was devastating. We as a family got close over it,” Gaynor recalled.

Colette’s memory makes using environmentally friendly materials non-negotiable for Gaynor. But the Santa Monica resident says that philosophy has made business difficult at times.

Some manufacturers balked at Gaynor’s requests, warning that her decisions would cost her and squeeze the young business’ margins. Colleagues told her that parents wouldn’t care as much about being green as they would about whether the game teaches their children to read and count. She parted ways with her first business partner, who wanted to invest in developing computer-based games rather than in eco-friendly production.

Last May, Gaynor dropped in on her printing plant in Guangzhou, China, to make sure her games were being produced as she ordered them.

“I wanted to actually hold the [soy ink] containers in my hands . . . because to me that was one of the most important things,” Gaynor said. “So many consumers, parents, retailers look to me and they trust what I’m saying.”

To her dismay, Gaynor found typical petroleum-based ink loaded in the presses. Cans of her soy ink were in a closet, covered in dust. She asked the plant managers to stop the presses, and Gaynor climbed atop the machines to watch as the facilities were washed down and the ink reloaded.

When the slew of recalls of Chinese-made toys started in the summer, Gaynor was relieved.

“I thought to myself, wow, it’s a good thing I was there, because now I really can rest easy and know with certainty how my products are being produced,” she said.

Staying on the green side of things hasn’t been easy on Gaynor’s budget. The company is still operating at a loss, and Gaynor, who is running the company on her own with an advisory board and two part-timers, is barely giving herself a salary.

But Gaynor remains as idealistic as ever.

“I don’t know if I’ve done it in the best way from a business standpoint, but it’s all because I’m passionate about it,” she said.

She donates part of her revenue to a tree-planting organization to offset the number of trees used to produce her games and to Healthy Child Healthy World, an advocacy group the Chudas started after Colette’s death.

Gaynor has a drawer full of ideas and handmade mock-ups for other educational games ready to be produced and played. The next one in the works is Pick-Up Words, a variation of the pick-up-sticks game, in which children try to remove bamboo sticks with words printed on them from a pile without disturbing the other sticks.

Before she settled on what material to use for the game, Gaynor had one very important question for her manufacturer.

“Is it taking any bamboo away from pandas?”

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victoria.kim@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Beyond Learning

Business: Sells educational games made in an environmentally friendly way.

Owner: Jill Gaynor

Revenue: $70,000

Employees: 2

What’s next: Gaynor is developing a game called Pick-up Words, a variation of pick-up-sticks, where children try to remove bamboo sticks with words from a pile without disturbing the other sticks.