5 ways to encourage your children to recycle

One of the most common things we hear in the house clearance industry is “if we’ve not had your help, we’d have just taken everything to the tip”. As much as this is quite worrying because of the ongoing contribution to landfill around the world, we understand. Clearing a property or moving to a new house is hard. Many people often work towards deadlines for their home move, so we know that it’s hard to find the time to remove everything in a completely ‘green’ way. This is why we’re here to help.

Moving on from the topic of house clearance to day to day life, we don’t think that there are many good excuses not to recycle anymore. The government have made it really easy by providing us with the bins, the guidance and alternating bin days to encourage recycling (in Gloucestershire, at least). We always find ourselves asking ‘what more can be done to encourage recycling?’ and we think part of the answer lies in educating the next generation of adults!

Here are a few ways you can encourage children to become more interested in recycling.

1.Start them young

They say that children’s brains are like sponges; they take in as much as they can. If children are brought up to recycle from a young age, this will just become completely normal to them and won’t be something they need to adapt to.

2.Explain why recycling is important

Like with most things when it comes to children, they tend to do better at something when they know the reason for doing it. Without going into too much doom & gloom, we think it’s a good idea to explain how recycling helps the planet and the rationale behind what we’re doing.

3.Make it fun

We don’t think there’s a better time to teach children than when they’re having fun. Perhaps you could create some sort of nightly game where they’re recycling without realising. Who can get the cardboard in the recycling bin from the furthest away?! That sort of thing. Obviously take caution depending on the environment/type of material and tailor the game to the age of the child.

4.Have indoor recycling bins

Taking the recycling to the outdoor bins can be a chore in itself; especially if children are busy or in their pyjamas. Having dedicated indoor recycling bins will encourage everyone to recycle more and remove some negative connotations that come with recycling, like having to leave the house.

5.Give them some responsibility

In our experience, children thrive when they’re given something to look after. If they’re given a job that only they are responsible for, they should hopefully feel like they want to take ownership of it and do their best. This could be something along the lines of being in charge of plastic recycling specifically.

We hope that these tips help you help your children help the environment. They may even help your whole family become even more environmentally friendly!

Here at Clear & Clean House Clearanc, we’re incredibly passionate about helping the environment. Being ‘green’ is our ethos and if we can ever do anything to help in terms of an environmentally friendly house clearance in Gloucestershire, you know where to find us.