Comments on: Teach Our Children Well

By: KateBla

KateBla — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:40:52 +0000

I was truly amazed at the number and content of all the postings here. Everyone has such great ideas and I’ve learned a lot. It’s also good to know that I’m not the only person who brings home from the beach (or anywhere else that I have lunch outside of home) banana peels and orange skins for the compost bin. Just today, I told my six-year-old son to bring back home from school the aluminum foil his pizza slice was wrapped in. Thank you everyone for sharing ideas. It’s hard to add anything new, other than a thought maybe that we should also encourage recycling in public places. I volunteer at the babysitting room of my gym. Kids use a lot of paper for coloring and it was so easy to put a carton box marked RECYCLING out for whatever they didn’t want to take home with them. Places like that also go through a lot of toilet paper so we collect the rools for projects.

By: Marilyn J. Brackney

Marilyn J. Brackney — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 15:25:06 +0000

I’ve been encouraging children to reuse and recycle materials to make art for more than thirty-five years. Although many adults are finally getting into the habit of recycling, I think kids are the ones who will make a difference in helping to save natural resources and landfill space.

About ten years ago, I decided to launch a Web site that teaches children how to creatively reuse and recycle materials to make art and crafts.
Some of the activities include drawing, painting, sculpture, collage, papier-mâché, and marbling.

A Trash Matcher helps visitors find appropriate art activities for the solid waste they have available, and a feature called the Badge Matcher allows Brownies, Girl Scouts and their leaders to quickly locate art activities that help satisfy badge requirements.

Trashasaurus Rex, a giant dinosaur made of solid waste, heads the site’s Public Relations Department, and there are numerous links to other art and environmental sites in the Research and Development Department.

I hope you’ll visit The Imagination Facory, and if you have suggestions of additional types of solid waste you’d like to see reused, please contact me and I’ll create something.

By: Jenny Pommer

Jenny Pommer — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:34:38 +0000

Try reusing your spent dryer sheets as glass and mirror cleaners. They work great! I use them on eye- and sunglasses; they are also easy to carry in the glass case and they can be reused multiple times. On mirrors, they clean the smudges and haziness with any liquid cleaner.

By: Jampa Williams

Jampa Williams — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:39:31 +0000

I am vegan. There is no single choice you can make that will have a greater “green” impact. I enjoy learning green strategies from others, and I am always grateful for what I learn and can implement. But I consider being a vegan to be the foundation for all of our other environmental approaches. I’d heartily recommend reading: “Reclaiming Our Health” and “The Food Revolution” by John Robbins, and “Mad Cowboy” by Howard Lyman, for a start.

By: Sun Enge

Sun Enge — Fri, 04 May 2007 11:02:18 +0000

My 10 yr old son has become quite the label reader, if something he wants to buy has any of the ‘bad’ ingredients, like high fructose corn syryp or not organic, he’ll put it back, saying “That no good Mom,we’ve got to find one that doesn’t have the bad stuff!” He also is in charge of the compost bucket, the recycling and the trash, and helps in the garden. (Snail eradication is one of his garden duties, he “teaches them to fly” as he wings them out of the garden.) Once he learned where ketchup comes from, he goes out every day and checks the progress of “his” tomatoes. He also shreds his papers from school, and brings home his recycle-able trash from his lunch, even tho the other kids tease him about not throwing his aluminum can away. If we don’t teach the children, then how else can they know and teach their children??

By: Nancy Catania

Nancy Catania — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:44:21 +0000

As our family’s contribution to keeping the earth a better place for generations to come, we recycle ALL of our
cardboard boxes coming from food or other items, i.e. cereal boxes, granola bar boxes, anything that comes in a box. We also recycle any paper containers from anything, as long as they are all paper – like cookie bags. We also reuse the plastic bags from the supermarkets for our cat litter scooping purposes, as that uses a new bag every day. We always reuse the plastic bags that our daily newspaper comes in – for lunch bags every day, as well as reuse our ziploc freezer bags over again, marking them for the specific uses, as you don’t want to reuse a bag used for freezing meat to freeze something other than that purpose. Supermarket paper bags are either reused or recycled, as well, for wrapping packages for mailing or for general household uses. We don’t have alot of trash because of the things we recycle, so less in the landfills and better for the earth!

We shop at Whole Foods in Princeton, New Jersey.

By: Meg

Meg — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 07:21:43 +0000

I try to buy from the bulk aisle to avoid packaging. I use the plastic containers for my nuts & grains. When they are empty, I wash them and bring them back to refill. It usually saves me time because I don’t have to write the number of the bin again since the sticker stays on the top.
I also try to reuse the plastic produce bags a few times and bring back my grocery bags over & over.

My kids (8 & 11) use cloth napkins, carry a no-trash lunch with reusable containers and Sigg waterbottles, bring back their fruit cores/peels to feed the worms and are great about turning off lights when they leave the room. We carpool as much as possible to school & activities.

By: Kim Hamilton

Kim Hamilton — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 13:58:44 +0000

I think a fun way to encourage recycling is too make a game out of it. For instance, if the city or a big corporation like Whole Foods sponsered a game where kids of all ages were to see how many containers they could recycle in a certain time in the right containers, and kids could win prizes, I think it would a positive experience all around. First, you could have the community bring cans, glass, and plastic bottles to a certain drop off point about two months before the event. Then, make three, appropriate size containers with appropriate size opening for deposit. Then invite all the kids in the community and arrange the competition by age group. And then finally, get businesses around the community to donate prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and “everybody wins prizes”. So, on Earth day, each kid have three minutes to recycle as many articles as fast as possible in the right container. The most correct deposits wins.
I think it would be a lot of fun, personally, having the feel of supermarket sweeps. In fact, a child/parent competition would be fun too. I bet by the second year people would have developed strategies on how best to win, which would mean they have been thinking about recycling subconsciously for the rest of the year.

By: Elaine McCracken

Elaine McCracken — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 10:10:09 +0000

As our washrags and dishtowels wear out, I keep them in a small cabinet above our broom closet. We use those to wipe up most spills, dry our hands, and do other chores for which we used to use paper towels. Paper towels are used only for wiping up grease or pet “problems.” When the rags are too wet to use again, we put them in a small basket under the sink and wash them with the laundry. By doing this we have had to buy only one roll of paper towel every month to 6 weeks. I also cut old t-shirts (that are ragged and cannot be taken to a charity store) under the armpits, then cut the resulting “tube” of fabric into two pieces. We keep those with the old washrags and they’re wonderful, soft, and a bit larger wipes.

By: Peggy Ayres

Peggy Ayres — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:35:35 +0000

My six children learned about reduce, reuse and recycle long before they learned their ABC’s. They amaze me with some of the creative ways they come up with to reuse items that so many of their friend’s families view as trash. So many times they have come home and said, “Mom, you’ll never believe what so and so’s mother is throwing out”.

We have made quilts out of old flannel pajamas (they are so soft and warm), wind chimes out of old keyes that no ones knows what they go to, and purses out of old jeans. Even old bits and pieces of broken crayons get melted in the microwave and cooled in old muffin tins (found at the curb) and made into multicolored “cookie crayons”. Broken dishes get saved and used for creating stepping stones – pizza boxes are a great mold for this use.