Recycling (for Kids)

Teaching children how to recycle is REALLY easy, set up a rubbish bin for your rubbish, and a recycle bin for your recyclables.

Find out what is recycled in your area.

Show the children the sign to look for. The Triangle means it is recyclable.

Children are very adaptable and learn very fast, especially when you practice daily. 

Recycle Bin
I washed out the recyclable item, passed it onto my child (aged 5, 3 & 2 at the time) and asked them which bin it goes into. Children regularly tip the bucket of recyclable materials into our recycle bin.

Children would then search for triangles on grocery items at the shops before even being purchased.

Bush Walking
Another natural learning activity we took part in was picking up aluminium cans from the bushes, we talked about how it is not good practice to throw rubbish in the bush or on the ground, enforcing using bins.

2 years on the children still talk about doing this and how it is not good for the environment to throw rubbish on the ground

Using up what we have
We always discuss using up what we have already.

Recycling Paper
Being homeschoolers we go through a lot of paper, or a lot of paper comes through our hands. We have dealt with paper by shredding it and...

• Compost
• Worm Farm
• Chicken bed layering
• Baby duck/ Baby chicken bedding
• On the garden
• Local pet shop

Our Personal Journey

We used to live in a VERY small house where space was limited and storage was non-existent. We didn't even have a shed for storage. 

Growing up in a recycling/keep-everything-that-could-be-used kind of home I grew a stockpile or recyclable materials very quickly. The problem was I had nowhere to store it, and was not using it. 

The time came when I discovered that these items would actually be more useful in our local recycling plant than clogging up my home. I packed them all up, put them in the recycle bin, and have never looked back nor missed those items. 

Internally this felt like a much needed release of relief as my home become more manageable and clutter-free.

2 years on, I now put all these items straight into the recycle bin where they can be turned into something else. 

Okay, I admit, now that we are in a bigger home with loads of storage we are growing a 'useful' box of recyclable materials for crafting activities. 

Homeschooling

Teaching children to respect the environment and to practice sustainability naturally means they will be more likely to live it out in their adult years. Under the Government Curriculum Framework this practice falls into the category of Society and Environment. 

To further this area of knowledge, simply go for a walk to your local water ways to discover what has happened to the rivers and lakes. 

You Tube 

We've watched documentaries on what they do with the recyclable materials and what can happen if they are not. I find it interesting and so do SOME of my children ;)

There is so much available to view! Go check it out. 

Recyclable Truck

The kids love watching the garbage truck come every week receiving a double viewing every fortnight when the recycle truck comes. Even after 2 1/2years of weekly stop-what-your-doing-and-run-to-the-window/gate and it gives so much to talk about.

Tip Runs

Naturally we take children wherever we go and specifically use tip runs as educational experiences. Children are so curious as to the environments they are in and the tip is no exception. The smells stimulate our senses in such a way we desire to recycle more and waste less. We drive past the recycle shed as slowly as we can to catch the glimpse inside of sorted-by-hand recycling. 

We discuss the piles of mattress's, metals, plastics and green wastes before dropping our gear off. 

We watch and talk about the giant machinery that workers use. 

We discuss the activitiy of all the different birds. 

We notice the plastics caught in trees and fences along the ways

We drive past the neatly packed recyclable materials ready and waiting to be trucked off to their designated places

Disclaimer: These are just SOME of the ways we are teaching recycling and sustainability to our children. I'm open to ideas if you have any available, and especially any links involved :)

5 Things I am Thankful for:

1. Having a town that recycles

2. Children learning daily and naturally in a way that supports maintaining order cleanliness within the home

3. Enthusiastic interest in the mundane

4. Over-abundance of the country we live in

5. Not feeling that I am being wasteful by 'throwing out' recyclable materials to the recycling plant

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recycling

I don't know how the rest of you were raised, but I was raised to reuse and recycle. Possibly not the exact type of recycling where you put all recyclable materials into the light blue bin for the council to pick up once a fortnight.

I am talking about opening gifts carefully so we can use the wrapper again, saving ice cream containers for a multitude of uses, piling egg cartons up until they are so high they tip over, and washing out jars with lids and putting them in storage for *cough* 'when' we make jam...

Remember laughing about how grandma's were so thrifty they would save the sticky tape on gift wrapping and other super strange things? My husbands grandmother doesn't flush her toilet.. and tells you off when you do it (TWICE ha ha) & she catches all her water in ice cream containers and waters her garden with it. Yes she is crazy & seriously I don't like her & not for her extreme recycling ways. 

Needless to say these habits were ingrounded into me so well that I have been doing them for years on my own accord. In fact I have (in the past) felt GUILTY for throwing away a perfectly good glass jar with lid just because I felt too LAZY to wash it and put it in the recycle bin. Actually to just put it straight into the rubbish bin. I had this dilema of having too many 'use one day' items clogging up my home.

Being the *ahem* wonderful homeschooling mum that I am... asking other more talented homeschooling parents what they do for "social studies" one day ended up in me reading about doing 'recycling' as part of social studies. There are lots of 'activities' that can be done. For example colouring in the 'recycle triangle', watching you tube videos of what happens to the recycling and what they make out of the materials, taking an excursion to your local recycling plant and actually putting recyclable products into the recycling bin.

For me: I googled. What is recyclable and what is not (Cos I honestly couldn't remember!). I was surprised to learn that recyclable items have this triangle on them...
Plastic ones look a bit like this one (although the number can be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 in our area): 

I was also surprised that yoghurt containers, milk cartons, tin cans, ice cream containers AND their lids, egg cartons and GLASS JARS were ALL RECYCLABLE (in our area). The site asks that they be washed out before being put into the recycle bin.

I was excited. I showed the kids the triangles and told them they go into the recycle bin. Then I would ask them if an item went into the bin or the recycle bin. They were more excited than I was and learnt quickly.

For me it meant I was able to declutter the multitude of ice cream containers, glass jars, yoghurt containers, egg cartons, re-usable containers that filled my already overcrowded and tiny cupboards and spare room. I managed to fill the bin up in a day. And had to wait another 12 days before it got emptied. During which time I had stored up recycling in boxes and bins. When that was emptied it took less than 5 minutes to fill the recycle bin. And so on and so on. It is filled in around a week.

It feels good to recycle, better knowing it isn't just getting dumped as land fill (a reason to use cloth nappies actually). Our rubbish bin is now only half-filled to 2/3rds full on pick up day. Good hey! It USED to be overflowing. My cupboards have more space and I can move better in my spare room.

If your my local reader check this out: http://recyclingnearyou.com.au/kerbside/EsperanceWA

I don't believe in the 'global warning crisis' and all those 'environmental concerns' but I do believe that we could look after the earth that God created with his voice a lot better than we do.

If you are interested in recycling I encourage you to check out what you can and can not recycle in your area and see if you are creating more work for the workers by putting in items that should not be present. 

5 Things I am Thankful for:
1. Freedom I feel, less stuff in the house (freedom from my OLD way of recycling to my NEW way of recycling)
2. Knowing that putting recycleable materials into the recycle bin is used better than it would be if it was stored in my home
3. Teaching children in a NATURAL environment
4. Learning about recycling myself and seeing what can be done with things
5.My children - because I love them, lots.

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