Recycling Collection in London

Helping Children Understand and Enjoy Recycling

Recycling means reusing an item all over again, either in its original form or as another material. When we recycle, it helps us not to overuse the resources nature has blessed us with. This is why everybody must treat recycling as important. You can help the environment to be safe by recycling - this is very easy and has a lot of benefits. And you would be happy to be a friend to the environment.

Would you like to recycle but don't know where to begin? You can use these ideas.

Former school uniforms

All of us outgrow clothes at a certain point, particularly school uniforms. It is possible you may have some that are of no use to you again. You can start off with these concepts.

What to do

• Resize. Pick up those old school uniforms and request that any of your parents resize them lengthwise in the case of trousers, shirt sleeves, and any other section.
• Gifting. You can gift your little brother or sister a school uniform no longer your size. Alternatively, you can give it to a friend it might fit.
• Sell. Don't feel like resizing or gifting old-school clothes? You can sell. There are people who sell old clothes physically and/or online. Use any of these services.
• Donation. Clothing banks are found in many London Boroughs. There are a few that run door-to-door collection. Find out more about this service. It's not a bad idea to give freely old school uniforms to charity stores in your area.

What happens to unrecycled former school clothes?

The simple answer is they end up in landfills. And most of these cloth materials are such that are difficult to decompose. This is why dumping old clothing is not encouraged. Rather, have them recycled - charity stores and cloth banks can help you reuse them by sending them to people who are not so privileged.

Paper

As children, you move from class to class and, in doing so, leave several workbooks and handouts behind. Should you have any, it would be fun to recycle them.

What to do?

• Recycle locally. Many waste clearance companies offer paper recycling services. You can leave the staples on; many recycling plants will handle it.
• Use as pet beds. Have a cute little pet? Your old paper can work to contour its cage. Alternatively, shred the paper to make a sweet little bed for that pet. If you are making a pet bed, please take out the staple.
• Turn into doodle pads. That old paper may often work for jotting down information, particularly from a landline phone conversation. Go on, take some pages off your old handout, fasten them together and place them near your phone.

What happens to unrecycled old paper?

Many times, in recycling paper, the ink and staples are removed, and the paper is sorted. Typically, the paper mill does this, after which the paper is made into pulp and processed into paper once more.

Lunch waste

Those lunches you don't eat or certain foods in them that you don't like or won't eat because you are full can be recycled in school.

What you can do

• Recycle at school. Many schools likely collect lunch waste to be recycled. Ask your teacher whether your school has a recycling centre.
• Produce compost. As a way of recycling, you can produce compost from lunch waste. Ask for clearance to do this. Your teacher can add their lunch waste too. A good place to use the compost is your school garden (if any).

What happens to unrecycled lunch waste?

Food that is not eaten is passed from the bin to larger landfills where they release environmentally harmful gases. However, when recycled, gases from food waste can power up homes, while as compost, they are useful for farming activities. Don't forget certain materials may not work for recycling, including wax paper, cardboard-plastic products, light bulbs, etc. However, don't hold off recycling for these reasons. So many things can be recycled and used again. Should you keep your mind on recyclables, the environment will be a much better place.

The Fun Part

As you get down to the exciting part of recycling, you will need to work with a parent, guardian, or teacher since there is so much to learn and enjoy.

It should not be difficult to recycle. Children can have a good time working around so many materials recycling them, and learning a thing or two. Let's get down to business. Any of these ideas can help you.

Do-it-yourself paper recycling

This process is useful in educating young children about recycling paper. And you need the following items for it:

• Iron
• Bucket
• Newspaper
• Water
• Square pan
• Window screen
• Blender
• Hand towel
• Measuring cup

Procedure:

• Read the newspaper, put everything into a bucket, add water and soak for 30 minutes.
• Take a handful of the soaked-up paper and blend till it is completely slurry.
• Move the blended paper into a measuring cup. To your square pan, pour about 3cm of water.
• Set the window screen on top of the square pan and place one cup of the slurry paper on the screen.
• Work the paper around the screen till it becomes very moist.
• Remove the screen from the pan and drain out the water.
• Turn over the screen splashed in slurry paper onto a hand towel. Very gently remove the window and let the pulp remain on the towel.
• Spread a second towel over the first, carrying the pulp. And iron the towels or run them over with a rolling pin.
• Let the pulp dry for 24 hours.
• Start using your new paper.

A game of collecting rubbish

Get the children to some public area, it may be a beach or park and set up a rubbish collection competition among them. Any child that gets to gather the largest garbage in half an hour is the winner. You are helping the children understand that carelessly dumping stuff around is not good while solving a community litter problem.

Comestic recycling

Rubbish can be converted to an aesthetic piece. Imagine how much fun it will be to get something that is old into an appealing item. Try these ideas:

• Corks from old bottles can make trays and casters with strings
• The wheel trim of cars can be made into garden embellishments especially when coated with fine paint
• Pages of school handouts can be formed into frames and murals to keep a child's schoolwork cosmetically

Musical waste

• It becomes easier to convert rubbish to musical instruments when you work on percussion instead of brass, which can be difficult
• Trashed plastic containers can be turned into drums which children can play with. In fact, the different sizes of these containers make it easier for different sounds to be released
• Plastics that are easily stretched can be used as cover for rubbish-turned-musical instruments for a more realistic item

Public speaking contest

Granted, some children may not be able to speak publicly, yet it is a great way to let children know that recycling is important. And setting up a recycling talk contest can spur children to find out all they can learn about recycling plus the impact of too much waste worldwide.

Should you be interested in any of these ideas enough to try them or have questions to ask, we will be happy to get a call from you on 020 37451098 or visit us at Dudley House, 169 Piccadilly, London W1J 9EH.