Recycling in your Early Years Service

It is important that children know how to respect and help the environment around them by recycling. Early years services should look at how to incorporate this into their daily activities. Research carried out by non-profit recyclers Repak revealed that 169,000 tonnes of plastic packaging is generated every year in Ireland but only 36% of that is actually recycled. Some 31% of all household waste is made up of plastic materials, amounting to about 37kg per person.

Do you reuse items in your service? What do you throw away that you could reuse in a different way? Do you have a recycle bin and/or compost bin in your service? Can you reuse things you throw away?

Recycling can be both fun and creative for both adults and children. You can introduce the children in your service to the fun aspects of recycling by turning an everyday item into something imaginative and creative. Try turning a plastic bottle into a bird feeder or a boat. Egg cartons are brilliant to use in your everyday creative activities.

Making a Bird Feeder using a Milk Carton

1) Firstly wash a used milk container thoroughly.

2) Then cut out a portion of the middle like in the picture above

3) Make a hole in the top not too far from the opening spout, and thread a piece of string through it.This would also be the time to decorate your birdfeeder- maybe in camouflage paint- green, brown etc; or stick on leaves and collage materials.Maybe add on shiny pieces of aluminium foil and see if that attracts the birds.

4) Once you have decorated the bird feeder, you can then fill it with bread and/or bird seed.

Recycling isn’t just about making crafts, you can also make music. Try introducing a Music Area into your outdoor environment using pots and pans and other recyclable items. See Longford County Childcare’s resource on Outdoor Play (available on our website) for more ideas.

Think about adding recycling into your Reading Resources.