by Kimberley Linstruth-Beckom

Created on: July 31, 2008

Recycling has been a buzz word since the 80's due to a huge concern of hazardous waste disposal. In 1987 The National Council for Voluntary Organizations started a project call Waste Watch which supported the reduction of waste by reusing and recycling. Since then, this organization has become an independent national charity that provides information, advice, and support to local communities, businesses, and even the government on how to reuse and recycle. This is a wonderful program to promote less waste in our landfills, but recycling products can do so much more for us. It can help us to live healthier lives due to less stress and we can even save a bit of green cash while we are trying to "go green" for the environment.

So how does one do this just by recycling you might ask? Well there are many ways and I'll go into a few of them here.

I love to do arts and crafts with my children because it's fun and it allows us to spend time together. A few of my favorite projects we have done over the years are making garden markers, bird houses, and Christmas ornaments. These crafts are rather easy to do and require very little buying on your part because the materials are in your house already.

For instance, instead of throwing out those ice cream sticks the next time you have one, use it in your garden as a marker. You can decorate them using colored markers or even rocks and pebbles from your garden. This will save you money and make your garden look nice. Another idea for those ice cream sticks is a mobile or wind chime or even a birdhouse.

And speaking of birds, a great project for those adorable little creatures is a bird feeder and what better way to make a bird feeder than to save your plastic milk containers. These make great feeders and are more economical than the average priced feeders that start at about $20 here in Connecticut. You can embellish them using leftover buttons from your old clothes, feathers found in a craft store, or even stones and pebbles found in your back yard.

Christmas is always a fun time at our house and it's because we spend a lot of time together making decorations for the whole house. I remember the first year we got a big tree. It was a bit costly and we knew it would be hard to fill this tree with purchased ornaments so we got out our pipe cleaners and started to make some ornaments. We also used macaroni as garland and even used a couple of spare pieces of felt for some decorative snowman ornaments. Our tree may not have looked

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>