Making recycling fun by April Lyons

When you have young children they soon learn what jobs are fun and what jobs they want nothing to do with. To encourage the future generations to recycle without thinking of it as a chore, we need to make recycling a fun activity that they want to participate in.

Getting started

recycling bin, egg shaped, When starting recycling you need to establish certain rules and ideas as to how you are going to be successful. Use separate bins for each recyclable product or by allowing the children to pick multi coloured plastic boxes to keep the materials in, they will want to help and will feel included in the activity. It will also make it easier to dispose of the rubbish. There are even fun looking recycling bins that the whole family will want to use.

Sorting the recycling

Usually there are a lot of materials that can be recycled throughout the day in the family home. If you have more than one child a good idea is to give each child a type of recyclable to be in charge of. This will make it a competition, and will encourage the children to participate.

Recycling toys

When children get older they grow out of certain toys and decided that they just don’t want to play with them anymore. But what can you do with them? Well there are many places they accept donations of toys as long as they are in a good condition, such as charity shops and nurseries. But what can you do with the broken toys? If they are made of plastic there are some council’s that run schemes that accept large plastic toys that can be melted down and made in to new toys. Soft toys that are not good enough for the charity shop can be put in a textile bank along with unwanted clothes. What about wooden toys? Wooden toys are generally more eco friendly and are more hard wearing therefore they can be reused once your child has out grown them. Most wooden toys are painted in bright colours to make them appealing. These paints are generally non toxic so they can be burnt, but check on the packaging before burning.

Toy libraries

Toy libraries are services that offer help to local families and children, based on a regular loan of toys for a nominal fee, sometimes even for free. They offer, play sessions for children and parents, information and advice about play and a friendly meeting place. So instead of buying loads of toys try and join a local toy library and loan and share these toys keeping the amount of toys you have to deal with to a minimum.

Clothes

Instead of throwing out the children’s old clothes put them in the dressing up box these cloths are then there for your children to cut up and accessorise as they wish. You can also you old cartons and toilet role tubes to create art and sculptures. Below is an idea from kinderart.com of how to make a birdhouse from an old milk carton.

One season birdhouse:

What You Need:

Milk carton
Stapler and staples
Masking tape
A soft cloth, rag or chamois
Brown shoe polish
Scissors or a knife
Twine

What You Do:

Clean and dry the milk carton thoroughly.
Staple the top of the carton shut.
Tear off small pieces of masking tape and cover the entire carton with the pieces of tape.
Using a soft cloth, rub brown shoe polish all over the tape. This will give the carton a rough, bark-like finish.
Cut a hole (WITH ADULT ASSISTANCE) about 4" above the bottom of the carton. The hole should be approximately 1" to 1 1/2" in diameter. This hole is for the birds to get in and out of the house.
Poke a few drainage holes in the bottom of the carton and two ventilation holes in the top of the carton.
Poke a hole through the top of the feeder, string a piece of twine through the hole and hang your birdhouse on a tree.

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