How to Recycle School Supplies

Each school year can come along with a colorful list of supplies your child needs to achieve scholarly success. Those items can wrack up a nice dollar. Furthermore, children are constantly trying to impress each other with cool new folders, wicked writing utensils, and trendy new backpacks. There would be nothing totally wrong with sending your child to school with his supplies in one of those green bags you can get at the grocery store, but what kid would jump at the opportunity to have his school bag tossed to the back of the bus by a bully while the other kids summon thunder by laughing at his bag?

You can recycle your kids school supplies for a number of reasons, even if he doesn't chose to use them strictly for school. A refurbished binder can be kept in the house to house those art assignments and A-papers that you want to save. Old patched book bags can be re-patched and redecorated to be sold at yard sales, or to be used for trips to the park or beach. On a side note, though, if you involve your child in the creative process of recycling school supplies, he or she may even want to reuse those things for the new school year, saving you a little bit of money.

Backpacks

Most backpacks will collect stains and rips along the bottom or corners of them. Zippers and buttons might break, and colors fade from exposure to the rough elements (your kid's foot kicking it across the bus stop). It's obvious that a run through the washing machine will help with cleaning it, and new hardware (zippers and buttons) can give it a bit of a face lift. Sewing the seams and holes will definitely be a nice fix; however, you and your child can find trendy patches and stylish material to give the backpack a total makeover. You can dye the backpack a new color to match the wild pattern your child chose for the handles or pockets. For example, you can turn a red and black backpack into a purple and black backpack, and sew a purple and white yin and yang material along the bottom edge, or along one of the front pockets to make it look like a brand new pack.

Binders

One interesting way to refurbish a tattered three ring binder is to find a map or old geography project from your child and glue it to the binder. If you open the binder and lay it ring-side-down in front of you and glue a map along the horizon of the binder, you can seal the map and entire binder with some wood varnish and let it dry. You'll get a weird old world map decor on the binder, and it will help to reinforce the edges. You can also sew a material cover over the binder, or have your child carefully measure and cut out laminated poster board onto the binder to cover the oldness.

Crayons

For younger scholars, a box of crayons can become a box of mischief or a box of mess. Crayons break into little bits and end up melted in the back seat of your car. For that matter, you can try creating science projects for your little ones by leaving broken crayons on cardboard in the sun to see what designs they make. You can also melt them into new crayons if you have metal molds. Some crayon makers even market kits that you can purchase just to remelt broken crayon pieces into new crayons.

Paper

Many elementary school children end up with packs loaded with old worksheets. You'll soon discover a forest worth of paper in your child's bag each week. One thing you can do to reduce the waste of those poor trees is to do a paper recycling project with your kid. Save all those papers. Shred them up or rip them up and stick as much as you can into a blender with some water. Pour it into a vat, then use screen to sift the wet paper into a sheet of paper. When the wet paper stuff dries, it will turn into a sheet of paper. You can staple some wood around a sheet of screen to make the paper mold, and when you squeeze some water out, turn it over and let it dry on a towel.

It takes a lot of work to make a lot of paper, but you have a few sheets of construction-like paper for your child to use for new crafts.

Recycling school supplies can be a good experience for your child to learn how to be thrifty as well as creative. You might save money on more school supplies, or learn you can use those refurbished items in completely new ways.