Outdoor spaces are essential for us all, there is no denying this fact. After all, being cooped up inside for too long isn’t good for anyone and fresh air can be hugely beneficial. Children in particular should be encouraged to get outside, to run and to play. In order to do so more easily, the presence of a playground space is a must in just about every single community in this country.
A safe playground solution is ideal for young children for a number of different reasons. For one thing, kids need to be active in order to stay in good shape. Obesity is on the rise not just in the adult population but among children as well. Thanks, in part, to the growth of accessibility to electronic devices, fewer and fewer children are getting up and playing in an active way. And living a sedentary life early on is likely to lead to a sedentary lifestyle in later life, something that will lead to a wide number of health repercussions, some of which can even be life threatening.
The second most compelling reason behind the need for kids to play is that of brain development, particularly of fine motor skills and gross motor skills alike. These skills are critical to develop in the early years of life, typically before the child reaches the still young age of six. If fine and gross motor skills are not fully developed by this age, it is unlikely that they ever will be. As you might have already guessed, this is something that can have lifelong repercussions for the child or children in question.
However, there are many factors that must be considered when any given playground is being constructed. For one thing, what materials will be used? Ideally they will be both low-maintenance, requiring only basic upkeep and care, and, in addition to being low-maintenance, will also be able to stand the test of time. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of materials to choose from.
Fiberglass, for instance, is one of them, and it is a tried and true material that has actually been around for quite some time now. In fact, fiberglass was first introduced back in the year of 1995. It was the brainchild of Owens Corning, but has now become widely used in many capacities across the country and even throughout the world as a whole. In many cases, fiberglass has become one of the most traditional fence materials around and is heavily used by the landscaping industry as well. Of course, fiberglass can now also be used for playground structures.
In addition to fiberglass, plastic playground structures are also common. After all, plastic is the definition of low-maintenance. In addition to being low-maintenance, plastic playgrounds tend to be easy to construct and quite long lasting. And a great deal of plastic is produced all throughout the world. The data backs this up, after all, showing that ten years led to the jump from 225 million tons of plastic being produced to more than 300 million tons of the stuff being made on an annual basis. Therefore, plastic is often the go to low-maintenance playground material to use.
However, many people have become interested in recycled plastic for various elements of playground equipment. After all, waste is a growing problem and recycled plastic has many of the same benefits as new plastic. It’s still low-maintenance after all, and as low-maintenance is one of the main selling points, this is an important thing to mention. Aside from being low-maintenance, the durability of recycled plastic is comparable to new plastic. It’s also much kinder to the environment, something that is perhaps equally as important as being low-maintenance and highly durable. After all, what good is something being low-maintenance if it just ends up in a landfill? Fortunately, recycled plastic building materials are becoming ever more popular as time passes on, both in playgrounds and for various other capacities (such as, to name just one example, recycled plastic fencing). And as plastics have been around since the early 1900s, there is plenty of plastic out there to recycle.