How do you get your family to live more sustainably, we hear you ask? Well, here are 5 ways to get your family excited about recycling.
Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new reusable objects.
And if you’re wondering why we recycle, it’s because it’s a more sustainable alternative to dumping waste in landfill or burning it.
Rubbish dumps are smelly and unsightly, landfill sites release greenhouse gases and affect local plants, soil, and animals, and burning waste in incinerators releases deadly gases into the atmosphere.
The bottom line is that if we want a planet to give to future generations, we need to recycle.
So, how do you get your family excited about recycling?
Here are 5 ways to get you started.
5 ways to get your family excited about recycling
- Lead by example: As every parent knows, kids love to imitate what you do. So, the best way to start them on their recycling journey is to be a positive role model. They need to see you recycling so that they can learn what, how, and why.
- Offer rewards: By offering rewards for recycling, you can turn a boring chore into an exciting game that kids will want to play again and again. Maybe you treat them to their favourite restaurant once a month, or a movie night at home. Or, if you can afford it, you might offer monthly pocket money based on how much your child has recycled.
- Make it fun: Kids love anything with fun in the mix, and recycling shouldn’t be any different. You could make it a game by having a race, creating a score chart for everyone to see, or having a fun activity to decorate your recycling station at home. You could also make up a special recycling song, or even encourage your child to write a story about their recycling journey to share with their friends and classmates.
- Make it competitive: With an emphasis on friendly, create a competition to encourage the kids to recycle the appropriate materials with a prize for the most recycled items. You could even extend the competition outside of the home to include neighbours or classmates. Maybe set up a points scheme with the winner getting a small prize at the end of each week or month to help motivate them.
- Join the ‘Every Bottle Back Trinidad and Tobago’ initiative: Unfortunately, most plastic bottles manufactured every year in Trinidad and Tobago remain uncollected. The Every Bottle Back Trinidad and Tobago initiative seeks to change this reality by encouraging people to collect and recycle plastic drinks bottles. The focus is on recovering and reusing plastic bottles by educating citizens on the benefits of recycling, and supplying tools to do so. The initiative’s primary goal is to support a vision of cleaner and brighter cities, streets, and beaches, and to end flooding through this effort. The aim is to reach a bottle collection and recycling rate of 20% by 2025.