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Teach Your Kids to Be Earth Buddies
- EI Editor Posted On Apr 11, 2022 | Learning Through Play
Did you know? The average American produces about 1,700 pounds of garbage every year, which means your personal annual trash pile weighs about the same as two large grizzly bears! Multiply that by a family of four and that’s a whole lot of trash filling our landfills, because although 75% of our trash can be recycled, only about a third is actually being recycled. In fact, more than 2.5 million tons of recyclable paper and paperboard waste end up in landfills every year, with packaging accounting for roughly a quarter of that total. More than 30 million tons of food waste also ends up rotting in the trash each year. Yup, our gross, grizzly-bear-sized trash piles are maxing out our landfills and polluting our environment. Luckily, there’s still hope – and our kids can help!
4 Family-Friendly Ways to Be Better Earth Buddies:
1. Pay attention to what you’re putting on your plate. Serve only what will be eaten, save the rest for another meal, and compost any uneaten food instead of throwing it in the trash. Kids can get hands-on composting experience with the Nancy B.'s Science Club® Garbage to Gardens Composting Kit, the only transparent composting kit designed just for them.
2. Become a conscious consumer. This means bringing your own bags to the grocery store (your kids can be responsible for remembering to bring them!) and a refillable coffee cup to Starbucks (when that’s allowed again), using a metal straw instead of plastic, and purchasing unpackaged items.
3. Research your city’s recyclable materials list and be sure to toss those items in the recycling bin, empty, rinsed, and dry. Our free, downloadable worksheet is a fun way for kids to learn about the different types of recyclables (while building fine motor and critical thinking skills, too).
4. Practice through play, like with the Design & Drill® Bolt Buddies™ Pick-It-Up Truck. Kids use a real, working, power drill to construct their own recycling truck, then play out their own community helper pretend play scenarios with the included sanitation engineer and his kitty cat co-pilot. Plus, all Design & Drill Bolt Buddies packaging does double duty as a playset, saving space in the landfill.
