As my little boy grows up, I will teach him all sorts of healthy habits: from eating healthy foods and drinking plenty of water to taking responsibility for his own actions and handling plastics appropriately. One of the ways I plan to do so is by teaching him about recycling.

He’s too young now to grasp the concept and prefers to play with plastic bottles rather than put them in a bin for recycling, but we’re working on it (we’re also working on learning to call me “mama” instead of “Bob” but that’s a story for a different kind of blog). There are several ways to help engage your own children in recycling. Here are a few ideas:

• Together, look up your city or county’s public works department Website and determine what items you can place in your recycling bin for collection.
• Take turns making one child the recycling coordinator for a week and allow them to determine what items can be placed in the recycling bin.
• Have a contest to determine which child collects more recyclables during his/her week.
• Put your child in charge of locating the plastic bag recycling bin at the grocery store (CA law mandates all large grocery outlets have recycling bins) and then bring back your plastic bags for recycling. You can even recycle the plastic wraps that cover bathroom tissue, paper towel rolls, etc.
• While on the road, play a “spotting” game by having your kids look for recycling bins in public locations.

Small, easy to implement activities can help create healthy recycling habits that benefit all of us in the end. And who knows, you may even find yourself more apt to recycle when you know there are little eyes scrutinizing your bins.

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Tags: Plastic Recycling, Recycle Plastic Bags, Recycling Tips

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Plastics Recycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.