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Recycling is important. That’s a given. But is recycling fun? For certain members of your household, it might never match the excitement of covering themselves and the new sofa in as much chocolate ice cream as possible, but there certainly are ways to make it a more enjoyable task – like these recycling games for adults and kids! When you know how to make recycling fun it’ll help get everyone in your household into the recycling habit, and that’s a brilliant way to reduce your carbon footprint and do your bit for the environment.
Fun recycling scavenger hunt
Collecting up all the things that can be recycled isn’t necessarily everyone’s idea of a fun afternoon. Make it into recycling games for kids to take part in, however, and they’ll focus on the fun and forget it’s a chore. You can do this by turning it into a scavenger hunt.
There are a couple of options for these games for recycling. You could either give each person the same list of different recyclable items, and they have to find at least one of each type, or they could have a specific category to collect. Add to the competitive spirit by seeing who can complete their list fastest (for the former) or collect the most (for the latter).
Games for recycling sorting
Separating the glass from the plastic from the cardboard can be a bit of a bind, but if you add a dash of competition into proceedings it becomes an opportunity for a win. And most of us like the chance to reign supreme.
This fun recycling competition can be made age-appropriate by leaving the less child-friendly items – like metal tins and glass – to the grownups. Plastic and paper/card are safer options for the younger ones. Then let the games begin:
- Each person collects a particular category from the stash: plastic bottles, cardboard tubes from loo rolls or kitchen towel, cardboard boxes, drinks cans, etc.
- Set a time limit and see who can build the tallest tower with their items.
- If using breakables like glass, or anything with a sharp edge like metal tins, see who can make the longest snake instead, so everything stays at floor level.
Make recycling games like this even more enticing by letting each person choose the type of items they’ll collect and build with. When the competition’s over, everyone places their category of items into the relevant box/bin, and the separating is done.
Recycling games for kids’ crafts
Fun ways to recycle don’t just have to involve collecting and sorting items into boxes to be taken away – they can also involve reusing those items at home. Lots of things can be used for craft activities, which not only stops them heading to landfill, but also saves money on buying craft materials... and keeps sticky fingers out of the ice cream tub, for now. It’s a win-win-win. Ideas include:
- Desk tidies made from tissue boxes
- Robots made from cardboard boxes
- Terrariums made from glass jars
- Figures made from toilet roll/kitchen paper tubes
- Boats made from plastic bottles
Recycling games for taking it out
Once the recycling has been gathered up and separated there comes the time it has to be taken out for kerbside collection. This can be made more fun with a simple relay race. Everything’s quicker when we work as a team, and assigning one person to each part of the journey from kitchen to kerb will get the job done faster and more enjoyably.
Finding recycling games for adults and kids to take part in together helps keep the process safe and age-appropriate. While your chocolate-covered five-year-old can carry a small box of cardboard and paper from the kitchen to the front door, you probably wouldn’t want them grappling with the big recycling bin outside – that’s a job for the older members of the household.
With these tips on how to make recycling fun you can make it a game, rather than a chore. And the more fun ways to recycle you introduce, the more likely everyone will get involved.
