Children love to participate in family projects. Starting a home recycling project opens a world of opportunity to teach about different materials used to make products, which ones are recyclable and which ones are not, and the effects on the environment. You can also use recycling to teach basic family finances and business terminology. Once you have contacted your local trash and/or recycling service, you can educate your children about the financial and environmental benefits of using recycling containers.

A Picture Paints A Thousand Words

Start discussing your project with pictures and examples of various food and household packages, both recyclable and non-recyclable. Plastic drink bottles and packaging, glass jars, plastic shopping bags, soda and food cans, paper and cardboard are all simple examples of recyclable materials. Cellophane, mixed media (such as food jar lids), and hazardous materials can be used to illustrate what items are not recyclable.

You can tape magazine pictures of recyclable materials to your recycling bins to help younger children understand what goes in the recycling container and what does not. This is also a perfect time to start composting. Kitchen food waste can be added to an outdoor compost pile or simply buried in your yard. In no time at all, your yard will exhibit the benefits of healthier soil without the use of chemical fertilizers that are toxic to humans.

The Buck Stops Here

The next step is to show your children the financial benefits of using recycling containers. Explain to your children how much money the family spends on trash collection. You can also explain how trash must be stored, collected, transported and disposed of, all of which costs the community money which is paid in the form of taxes.

You can show your children how spending less money on garbage disposal helps the family financially. You can bring this message home by taking some of the savings and passing it on to your children in exchange for managing the recycling bins. Depending upon your children’s ages, you can offer payment for things such as monitoring the recycling bins, emptying the recycling containers, and rinsing out the bins for recycling.

The Business Of Recycling

Your children can learn basic business terminology by collecting and returning cans for the deposit or selling the aluminum, depending upon your state’s policies. All business finances are recorded in one of four areas: assets, liabilities, income and expenses. You can explain to your children that the tools of their “business”, such as the recycling bins, little red wagon, and trash cans, are their assets. If they have to borrow money from the family to purchase any of those assets, that debt is a liability. Liabilities are subtracted from assets for a net worth figure.

The cost of trash bags, garbage disposal, and recycling services are their expenses. Allowances, sale of aluminum, and can deposit earnings are their income. Expenses are subtracted from income for a net profit figure.

While it is difficult to place a monetary value on a safe and healthy environment, your children and their children are sure to benefit from using recycling bins.

Photo by Anna Duncan Art

Have you ever bought a bottle of water, juice or some other beverage? What did you do with the container? Many of us would say we dropped it in one of the nearby recycling bins, some would even say the garbage, a few of us will admit to throwing it on the ground. It doesn’t hurt anything, right?

The Problem With Plastic Bottles

The plastic bottles that make it to recycling bins are processed into new products, and that’s a different story altogether, but it’s the ones lying on the ground that are of concern. These make their way to our waterways where they are carried off by the current. They collect on beaches where children play and where animals live or come for a drink.

Lids float, and as birds, such as albatross, fly above, it sees them as food. The birds pick them up and take them home to their young to eat, which they do. As you see in the movie, thousands and thousands of these baby birds are dying with bellies full of bottle caps. What about the retainer rings? Those aren’t any better. Animals get them caught him their tails, necks, and bodies. These animals will die, become seriously ill, or lose limbs.

Bet You’ve Eaten Plastic!

What about those bottles that not only don’t make it to recycling bins, but also don’t even make it to the shore? Instead, they break into tiny pieces along the way. The small little pieces float in the water, creating a toxic soup. Fish ingest these little pieces where the chemical leaches into their body. We catch and we eat the fish digesting the chemicals along with it.

Why are these chemicals a concern? One chemical found in plastic is known as BPA, which studies have linked to prostate and breast cancer, uterine fibroids, and infertility. Children are not immune to these chemicals either; many cause learning and developmental problems.

Antimony is another plastic chemical that is known for causing nausea and dizziness, depression and even death if you get enough of it. Health and environmental experts believe that these toxins are a big contributor to a lot of the common illnesses and conditions. Recent studies have even suggested some of these chemicals attack Y chromosomes in the earliest stages of animal and human fetuses, causing a severe decline in the number of male children and animals being born. If this trend continues, we could essentially be looking at the end of humankind.

Putting An End To Plastic Problems

Stop buying plastic bottles. Stop throwing garbage on the ground. Stop ignoring bags and other pieces of plastic lying on the ground. Pick them up and get them into recycling bins so they can be reprocessed. Every piece that we save from reaching our waterways may save an animal or even us. Recycling bins are around, so be sure to use them.

No doubt about it, this is a serious problem. Our biggest problem is fixing it. The only way we can repair this is to stop promoting the use of plastics. If you do buy plastic, make sure you get something you can reuse. When it’s time to be thrown away, make certain it goes into recycling bins. Now that you know that the cost of a bottled beverage is far more than a couple of bucks, maybe that next one won’t be as tempting.

Green Corporate Strategies

Every level of these businesses has taken the importance of the environment and the rest of the world into consideration. Walmart is one of the best examples of this. They have made achieving a neutral footprint one of their main goals. What started with recycling bins and recycling containers has quickly grown into a completely new corporate culture. All of their values, goals, and decisions now take the environment and the world’s population into account.

Walmart is still working on their environmental goals including the need to find alternative energy sources and affordable solar energy. However, their efforts don’t just focus on their business. In the past, the retailer challenged its customers to see if they could sell 100 million energy efficient light bulbs. They have also been working closely with their vendors — 60,000 of them in fact.

Additionally, they are helping their suppliers limit their packaging and finding green alternatives that will help keep their recycling bins empty as well as addressing their energy use. They have also held several contests that are intended to gather new green ideas and encourage others to use their recycling containers and test their recycling prowess.

Green Building Concepts

The test or demonstration stores these retailers have built are essentially a large, real-life collection of the best eco-friendly ideas the world has had to date. This single investment will benefit the world in three different ways. The main benefit is the fact that these companies can test numerous concepts in the real world to find out what works and what doesn’t.

Even more powerful perhaps, is the effect these buildings have on their consumers. Visitors to these revolutionary businesses learn about all of the simple ways they can help the environment as well as stay informed about the newest technologies and techniques available. This investment also encourages others to take steps towards a greener life. Even if they only purchase recycling bins, it is a start.

These buildings have their standard recycling containers, but it’s their innovative ideas that really make these places fascinating. Many of these test stores are using geo-thermal heating to cut down on their heating expenses while alternative power sources cut down on the impact of air conditioning and electrical bills. When you consider the amount of resources businesses consume in these two areas alone, you can see the true benefits these two technologies.

One concept that some of these stores use focuses on eliminating wasted utilities. The installed HVAC system collects the heat given off by the large refrigeration units. They convert this heat back into energy that is converted back into the store. Daylight harvesting systems maximize the amount of natural daylight lighting the building. These stores also have glass doors on medium temperature display cases, use energy efficient case fans, and long lasting light bulbs. Their efforts have resulted in 60 percent less waste going back out into the environment and are using approximately 30 percent less energy.

If you have been wondering what you can do in addition to using Waste Wise recycling bins, consider what the businesses and organizations in your area are doing. Even if their ideas and techniques will not work well in your home, their inspiration and creative thinking will help you find ways to make the world a whole lot greener.