Global Picture
Around the world, people reuse things in interesting ways. With the wide-spread use of the Internet, people can easily share all of their great ideas for reusing materials and giving them a new life.
Toys from Trash
A group of artists in South Africa collect aluminum cans, bottle caps, plastic bottles, bits of wire, and other refuse to create functional toys like cars and radios as well as souvenirs like decorative flowers and pens. Challenge your students to make a toy out of trash. For the best results, structure it as a take-home assignment that they can work on with a parent. By having the children work independently from one another, you'll end up with a wider variety of projects. At the end, talk about what types of trash your students used and what they made with their trash.
Reusing takes time and patience. You need to make sure that items are clean and safe. You need to put aside your “garbage goggles.” It is a long-term commitment, and you should prepare yourself for the little messes that come along with it. It may seem difficult to wash out the jam container and reuse it for leftover soup, but in the end it will save you money and help the planet.
Idea Sharing
How Can I Recycle This? (www.recyclethis.co.uk) is a British blog that has readers submit reuse questions for everyone to respond to. People can send in a request for ideas for reusing old gloves, bubble wrap, banana boxes, and just about anything else you can think of. The authors of the site and the other readers submit their ideas and personal pictures of ways that they've either reused something themselves or seen it reused somewhere else. It's fun just going through the site and seeing all of the imaginative ways people are reusing everyday junk.
You can start your own idea-sharing effort either in your classroom or on a hallway bulletin board. Students (and staff) can share pictures and short descriptions of how they are reusing things.
