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Starting Young: Teach Your Children to Reuse, Rather Than Discard

If you want to teach your child something, you start teaching the lesson at a young age. The more practice they have, and the more they see YOU doing something as a role model, the more likely they will embrace the lesson and use it throughout their adult life.

Now, more than ever, recycling, reuse and conservation are important to all of us. If we take these things seriously, we can help the earth, and help ourselves. We can reduce the cost of living and help our children learn that with a little ingenuity and some thought, they can change the world!

Here are a few ideas that will help your child learn how to look at the world and find opportunities to recycle and reuse items:

Glass Jars or Old Vases – Don’t throw them away. Go to the garden store and buy some seeds. Help your child plant a small flower or a little tomato plant or something else that will grow and produce beauty or food.

Printer Paper, Copy Paper and/or Old Letters or Pages – Don’t throw these away either. IF they are blank on the flip side, store them in a box or on a shelf so your child can use them to draw pictures, jot down notes when doing homework, or otherwise make use of the blank side of the page.

Plastic Gallon Milk Containers – You can cut these in half and make planters out of them, or fill them with water and use them as an outdoor water dish for your dog or cat.

Pages from a Newspaper or Magazine – Your child can use pictures from these publications to create a collage for fun or for a school project, and/or you can save the comic section of the newspaper for gift wrapping.

Old Egg Cartons – You can use these to store small toys or pieces of a game. When the egg carton starts to tear or fall apart, recycle it and use another, newer egg carton, to replace the one you are recycling.

Plastic Bags – Use bags from discount stores, grocery stores and pharmacies to store dirty clothes when you travel with your child, or to wrap a dirty diaper until you get home and can dispose of it properly. You can also use these to store a set of clean clothes in the trunk of your car so that your child can change after they go to the beach.

Old Clothes – Don’t throw away those old clothes. Put them in a big box or a trunk and let your children use them as costumes for Halloween, or just to dress up and play games.

There are many things you can do to teach your child. Get creative! And, show your children that household items can become treasures – to be used in a different way - after they are no longer being used for their primary purpose