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The Recycle Cycle


My kids are crazy about recycled art these days. At school they bring in recycling and basically pile it up and tape or glue it into new structures. While that’s a great idea to get the kids thinking about recycling, when the recycled art comes home it usually goes back into the recycling. Sorry, but we can’t save everything they do at school and not all of the recycled art looks or smells like it was cleaned first.

So today I decide to show the kids how recycling works.

First I ask them to get two cartons that were supposed to go into the recycling bin. Briana grabs a Cheez-its carton and Abigail grabs the applesauce.


I get a frozen Weight Watchers breakfast carton. I ask the kids if they know what the word recycling means.

“It means reusing things that have already been used,” Briana says without hesitation.

Abby adds on, “reduce, reuse, recycle.”

Clearly they are well versed in the idea. How recycling works is a mystery. I explain that cartons like the ones we have are picked up by a recycling company and taken to a recycling plant. "A recycling plant? A plant does the recycling?" Abby giggles, knowing that what she said couldn't be correct but not knowing what I meant.

I have to stop and explain what a plant is in that context. When we are back on track I tell them that the cartons are cut into small pieces, mixed with water and rinsed, then the water and carton piece mixture is blended up and anything not paper pulp is separated out. Sometimes metal or plastic is used on labels so that has to be removed.

I hold up my Weight Watchers carton and tell the kids something that I only recently found out – that any cartons used to hold food in the freezer cannot be recycled because the cardboard is treated to withstand the freezer and keep the food inside cold. Also pizza boxes with grease or cheese on them are not recyclable. But most cartons and cardboard items are.

After the pulp is blended up and separated out, it is dried and rolled into sheets to be made into paper products like paper, tissue paper, napkins, and more cardboard. That’s what we’re going to do today.

Step 1: Cut up a recyclable cardboard box. I wouldn’t suggest using a box with a metallic label because the small amount of metal will get separated out in the blender and sink to the bottom, and you risk wrecking your blender. We use the non-recyclable frozen food box to store the pieces we've cut.


  
Step 2: Put the pieces in the blender with a good amount of water.



The girls unintentionally add more cardboard than they are supposed to, so I have to add more water. Needless to say we make a very big batch of paper pulp.



Step 3: Strain the mixture. I put aluminum foil on top and flattened the pulp with a cake frosting spreader. Wax paper would have probably worked better, but we are out. We never seem to use the stuff, but are always out when I need it for crafting!

I took a picture of the straining, but I think the mess may dissuade some of you from trying it. You can come up with a better straining method than Bounty over Tupperware. So I’ll refrain from posting that pic, but here’s one of the Tupperware post smoothing.


See, nice and neat.

I save a little ball of the pulp for the kids to see and handle.


  
At first everyone thinks it is yucky. But then Abigail points out that it smells like a coloring book if you spill your water on it, and they are both intrigued then. Abigail wants to do an experiment and wet her coloring book and check if she is right about the smell. No. Definitely not.

Step 4: Wait. The waiting is the hardest part… sing along with me. The kids couldn’t wait to see their paper so this…


…is turned into this


It’s their paper. Briana makes hers shaped and colored like a shamrock and Abigail’s becomes rainbow paper. While they paint I tell them that real paper is painted white in a similar way.

We let our paper dry overnight.
  

And we have homemade paper!


And now we’re off to Barnes and Noble to buy some all-natural, recycled paper so that the kids can see how our paper is very similar to what is really made in recycling plants. Hmm…the Frozen movie comes out today. Maybe we’ll go to Staples instead.

Have a great day. And don’t forget to recycle this idea with your own kiddies.

<3 Pedigreed Housewife 

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