- navanitam
If you can’t Recycle, Up-cycle it!
Updated: Jun 27, 2020
Today after school , me & my son went to check our mailbox & then proceeded towards the recyclable bins to drop our recycling stash. And it was full to the brim! He exclaimed wow it is super full, now what do we do? I said let’s wait till tomorrow and come back? We headed back home & I enquired what he learnt in school? He replied, they didn’t do much today… so I suggested how about we dig through our recycles & see if we can make a project. His face lighted up, you mean we do an activity ? Yes, yes let’s do an activity.
Things that we found in our stash:
Egg carton
Milk carton
A chipped coffee mug
Round food containers
Trader Joe’s Mochi ice cream box
Pasta sauce jars
I showed him the stash & asked him if he can think of any alternate uses to these items? He wanted to make a caterpillar out of the egg box! I was a little confused about what he meant. Then, he explained, in school they made a caterpillar using half of the egg box. So we decided to make one at home. Sadly, I could only find one googly eye. So he named it as a Zombie Caterpillar!
We decided to use the Milk carton as a Watering can.
I covered the sides of the broken mug with Hot glue & put masking tape on it, so that it doesn’t have any sharp ends, & we stored color pencils in it.
The food containers were filled with his little toy parts.
The mochi Ice cream container served as a paint palette.
And lastly I used the Pasta sauce & Salsa jars to store legumes & seeds.
And soon we had nothing left to throw! Looks like we up-cycled everything. Up-cycling is creatively using your waste materials. Rather than buying new things, it is important to think about how to re-use something that we already have. Not only it is a fun project, it also makes our future generation more aware of their habits. It will improve their creative thought process. After all we will have to leave this world in their hands to make it a better place for everyone.
What are you up-cycling today ?