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Showing posts with the label recycle

Craft: Make an Fabric Wrapped Initial

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This week's craft is brought you you by Lauren at Goody-Goody *Handmade . She takes a simple piece of wire and shapes it free form to make this creative craft. This is something that can be done with children of all ages. You can use recycled materials and really let the creativity flow. Have  fun! Materials - paper wrapped wire (how about reuse: take an old wire hanger  - fabric scraps, cut into strips at least 1" wide. Length doesn't matter much. - glue gun - buttons, bits, beads and baubles - cord for hanging Diane Chase, author of Adirondack Family Time: Tri-Lakes and High Peaks (Your Four-Season Guide to Over 300 Activities) for the towns of Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, Jay/Upper Jay, Wilmington, Keene/Keene Valley which is available online or bookstores/museums/sporting good stores. Diane is currently working on the second guidebook in the four-book series of Adirondack Family Activities.

Fake Christmas Trees vs. Real Trees

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According the NYS Department of Environment Conservation (DEC), for every one Christmas tree that is cut, one to three more seedlings are planted.  The benefit for using a real Christmas tree instead of a plastic (fake) tree is that almost all Christmas trees are grown as crops making the switch from an artificial tree to a real one an easy decision. It takes six to seven years to grown a Christmas tree. For those years that  real tree soaks up carbon dioxide , a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change (global warming) and the chemicals to make plastic trees actually creates more greenhouse gases. Real Christmas trees are a renewable resource. In addition most town collect used trees to be chipped and recycled for mulch, which helps reduce water usage in municipalities. Most fake trees are not biodegradable.

Earn Money For Your School: Recycle Candy Bars

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Get your school or non-profit involved.  Earn money and help eliminate waste! TerraCycle is on a mission to eliminate the idea of waste. Each waste collection programs (each one is called a “Brigade”) for previously non-recyclable, or difficult-to-recycle, waste. The collected waste is then converted into new products, ranging from recycled park benches to upcycled backpacks. Select Your Waste To get started, simply sign up and join a Brigade program for which you want to collect. There are currently more than  40 Brigade programs  that range from food packaging (like drink pouches and candy wrappers) to office supplies (like pens and tape dispensers) to personal products (like cosmetic, beauty and diaper packaging). You can join as many Brigade programs as you like. Collect and Send

Go Strawless!

"Even as wisdom often comes from the mouths of babes, so does it often come from the mouths of old people. The golden rule is to test everything in the light of reason and experience, no matter from where it comes." Gandhi Okay people f you haven't given much thought to the drinking straw, think again. In February 2011, Fourth grader, Milo Cress of Vermont learned that more than 500 million disposable plastic straws are used each day in just the United States alone. Cress is now on a quest to rid the world of drinking straws. When Cress discovered so many straws were being discarded every day, he pledged to stop using disposable straws and now asks the rest of us to follow suit. BeStrawFree.org realizes that some people have to use straws but just asks that we rethink the amount of waste we generate with each straw we take. According to the BeStrawFree.org site, 500 million straws would fill more than 127 school buses daily.  Picture that amount of drinking stra