Recycling for Children Now or Later?
Everything you throw in the trash today will sit in a landfill or potentially float in the ocean for thousands of years. Tons of waste will keep piling up and it will cause a lot of problems for the environment. Did you hear the recent news about a dead whale in eastern Indonesia which was found with about 1000 pieces of plastic in its stomach? This is just one of the sad examples of the negative effects caused by indisposed or excessive waste.
So what can we do to reduce the volume of waste? One of the many ways is to recycle. Recycling is a process of collecting old used up things and creating something new from them. Lots of things like cans, bottles, paper, or cardboard can be remade into new products.
As cited in Kenburn, Here’s an easy example of how paper can be recycled which you can do at home.
Get some paper scraps and soak them for about 30 minutes in hot soapy water (dishwashing soap is fine).
Get your parents to mix the wet paper in a blender until it makes a paste. You can even add some food colouring to make fun coloured paper.
Pour the mixture into a large square frying pan and add about 3 cm of water. Then press a piece of plastic on top of the mixture, which is the same size as the pan, and squeeze all of the water out.
Lay the plastic with the paper mixture on it on a tea towel and remove the plastic.
Lay another tea towel on top and roll it out with a rolling pin so it is very thin.
Get your parents to iron the mixture and leave it to dry for 24 hours.
Once it is dry, the paper is ready to use.
Recycling is not difficult. If there is a recycling station in your area, you can collect your recyclable trash and send it there to ensure that your waste will be used again to make new materials or products. You can also easily recycle your waste at home by yourself. One of the examples is paper making which is a great way to use old scraps of paper. You could turn your paper into birthday cards, coloured craft card, or name tags.
In addition to turning your old things into new products or materials, you can also reuse them to serve the same or different purpose. Things like cans or bottles can be used again without throwing them into the bin. This way, the waste you produce will not pile up in the landfill or contaminate the environment.
In short, recycling is an easy thing to do and it should start right now. We can’t wait for the waste to keep piling up to become mountains of garbage or islands of garbage in the ocean, which may harm our future generations. Start now! You can start small from your own house and then persuade the people in your area to recycle!
Sources:
http://resusethisbad.com
https://www.kenburn.co.uk/
