Encouraging Children to Recycle

At CheaperWaste we get really excited about Recycling and promote it whenever we can. Why wouldn’t we? It’s one of the best and easiest ways to positively affect climate change. And we know that it’s really important when recycling that everyone is on board and working towards a greener future, and a responsible attitude towards waste management, and that includes the smallest members of your family!

But, how do you encourage Children to recycle?

Playtime – Make Recycling Fun

The first any easiest way to get kids to recycle is to make it fun if it feels like a chore then they probably won’t be interested. So, we’ve created our 5 top tips for making recycling fun.

Get outdoors

Burn off some energy but encouraging your children to play outdoors and introduce fun recycling games for them to play. We love this one for Mom Junction, called Recycling Relay.

To play you will need 3 boxes, 1 for recycled items, one for landfill items and one for items that can be reused, and a big pile of clean rubbish, probably about 20 items (depending on how many kids you have playing).

Place the 3 boxes in your garden with the reuse box closest to you and the landfill box furthest away, then the children have to sort through the rubbish pile to decide which box each item should go in and run to the respective box and back.

At the end of the games review the boxes and ask players to explain their choices.

Or you could even create a small vegetable patch so children can grow vegetables or herbs, this will have the benefit of both teaching children about sourcing food responsibly, and help you get rid of food waste such as fruit or vegetable peelings by composting them.

Get crafty with Recyclables

All sorts of crafts can be done using household items that would usually end up in the bin, Glass, plastic, and cardboard are all very versatile and come in a variety of colours to spark your children’s imagination.

Find inspiration with this great video from Baby & Child magazine

Inspire creativity

Break out the paints and crayons, and ask your children to paint about what recycling means to them, you can discuss with them the effects of landfill waste on the environment and climate change and ask them to paint positive images of a healthy earth.

If that seems like a bit of a challenge for young children, you can always get them colouring nature scenes and recycling logos, you can find some templates here.

Test their recycling knowledge

Take this quiz from CBBC’s to test how much your children really now about recycling, some of the answers might even surprise you!

With the quiz, you can find out about which household items can be recycled, which bin to put them in, and what all of those confusing labels really mean!

Reward good recycling behaviour

Make sure to reward your children when they recycle, the positive affirmation will make sure they’re on the right track.

By encouraging children at a young age you’re laying the foundations for informed, educated, and responsible adults, who will recycle automatically and be part of the solution to climate change.

Talk to us today about our Recycling Services for businesses.

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