4 Out of the Blue Bin Have you ever seen a landfill A landfill is an area of land set aside for dumping trash The trash is buried and covered with soil As people throw away more and more trash more land is turned into landfills But we don’t want a world full of garbage To stop this we need to reduce the amount of trash we make Recycling is a great way to make less trash This is the process of turning old materials into new ones Paper plastic metal and glass are all recyclable materials At landfills bulldozers are used to pack in as much trash as possible
5 The symbol for recycling is a triangle made of arrows You may have seen it on the side of large blue bins Many towns and cities provide these bins for households as part of their recycling programs Trucks collect recyclable materials from the bins They bring these materials to a recycling center instead of a landfill What happens at a recycling center Machines sort the recyclable materials They are then processed and remade into new paper plastic metal and glass items This kind of recycling isn’t the only way to reduce the amount of trash we create Read on to see how you can recycle materials into art or other useful items yourself Recyclable materials such as aluminum cans are pressed together into bales at recycling centers
6 Upcycling Do you have old clothes you don’t wear anymore Upcycle them Recycled materials need to be shredded melted or processed some other way before they are made into new things But you can recycle at home in a simpler way You can transform recyclable materials by upcycling them To upcycle means to change an item into something even better For example you can transform an old T-shirt into
7 a fashionable new scarf Or you can turn empty cardboard boxes into a useful set of shelves All you need are recyclable materials craft supplies and your own creativity Make something for yourself or create gifts for friends and family You might not even need to spend any money for supplies You probably have most of them in your home already With upcycling you can change unwanted things such as aluminum cans plastic water bottles or old magazines into stuff everyone will want Let’s get started transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary Start by gathering clean bottles and cans to use in your projects
