Teaching Kids to Respect the Environment

Parents

Brett Girvan is right! When children understand the benefits of looking after the environment, they are keen to do their bit. If you think about it, it actually makes no sense to a child to pollute the environment, deplete resources and fill land with non-biodegradable waste that could be recycled. This is where parents can help to convert children’s natural enthusiasm to do good deeds by providing them with the opportunities to do so.

Children

In the case of young children, ask them to decorate and label recycling boxes, then you can turn recycling into a sorting game and put them in charge of ‘policing’ everyone in the house to put the plastics, glass paper and aluminium into the appropriate boxes. This will help recycling to become an important issue and will also train recycling practice to become second nature to them.

A trip to your local recycling centre will really help your children to appreciate how useful recycling is. Many apartment buildings and local communities have recycling bins in parking areas, so be sure to also make use of these, to get your child familiar with sustainability at the earliest age.