Teaching Kids Everything They Need To Know About Recycling

We often fail to include our kids in the process of recycling, and that’s a huge mistake. It’s something they can enjoy with you if you take the time to teach them about it.

To teach children how to recycle different materials, we must first teach them how to prepare them for recycling by cleaning them from other substances and elements. Each material requires a different type of preparation and a particular way of sorting it in their designated containers.

If you follow a few of these simple instructions, both you and your kids will play an important part of keeping the recycling circle going in your community, and you can enjoy the fruits of your labor together.

Teaching kids about what goes where

We don't need to build a plastic washing line to understand how recycling workd: the recycling process begins with waste separation that’s done at your home in order to place them in the appropriate containers. These recycling containers have different colors on them to help you distinguish them more easily:

• Green containers: for glass
• Yellow containers: for plastic
• Blue Containers: for paper and cardboard

In addition to these three basic colors, every municipality or county can have other ones added if there’s a need for more specialized containers. In many cities you can also find places called “green points”. These are places with separate containers that are used for depositing toxic or other hazardous materials such as batteries, oils, appliances and other dangerous debris.

How to recycle different materials

Fabric

There are some basic rules when it comes to recycling fabric:

• Any old clothes you want to donate have to be cleaned and ironed with all the tears sewn.
• Any pieces of fabric you want to make rags from must be cleaned, regardless of size.
• All buttons, zippers and other decorations must be removed from fabrics that are to be recycled
• Separate all nylon, polyester or other synthetic material from natural ones

Plastic

• All plastic that is to be recycled has to be classified according to its type
• Pieces can be whole, and they can be broken, but they must never be dirty or contaminated
• All plastic should be rechecked again before being put in a recycling container

Glass

• All glass should be sorted according to its color, as that’s what determines its type
• All glass meant for recycling should be completely clean
• All other components such as corks, caps, threads, labels and wax should be removed
• All bottles should be checked before they’re recycled to see if they’re returnable. If this is the case, they don’t require recycling and can just be disinfected and refilled.

Paper and cardboard

• All paper and cardboard you collect for recycling should be packed and ties, and shouldn’t be wet or wrinkled
• All paper should be sorted according to its type: whether it’s newspapers, magazines, office paper, printing paper, cardboard, etc.
• Avoid tearing, wrinkling and wetting the paper.
• If possible, separate paper from cardboard
• No carbon paper or cellophane should be packed along with the paper