The following bin-building ideas can be good for kids at any age. If your child is 1-2 years old, you'll have to put together the recycling bin on your own. But, at this age, your child is walking around, which means you can walk with your little one to and from the recycling bin and even begin having him or her place items in the bin with your help. They are already learning by modeling behavior at this age as well, so the more you show them with your own actions, the better! The older they get, the more ownership they can take on these projects. With your help and guidance, your kids will have no problem creating their recycling bins and learning about the environment. They may even teach you a thing or two!

CARDBOARD BOXES
We all have cardboard boxes around the house, so repurposing these materials as the base for your recycling bin is a great way to turn them into something really useful and fun!

GET STARTED:

• Grab an extra box and tape it completely shut.
• Sketch out a face like you would when carving a jack o' lantern. Make sure to draw a face with a really big mouth that will make a large enough opening through which to fit containers of various sizes.
• Cut out the mouth with scissors or a matte knife and, voilà, you've created something really fun that can be covered with anything from paint to découpage to match any room in the house.

Not only will you be making a beautiful new element for your child's play room, you'll be making a good habit easy for your children. And, 1 and 2-year-olds will love "feeding" their recycling bins.

BULK FOOD BOXES
Bulk food boxes provide us with really great vehicles for storage — they're oversized and sometimes wax-lined (cracker boxes, cereal, etc.). And, the lining in these packages can come in handy for recycling old bottles and cans that may contain a bit of moisture. So, after your kids are done snacking, repurpose that big box into a new recycling bin.


CARDBOARD TUBES
Cardboard tubes, usually used for forming concrete columns, can be purchased at any home improvement store very inexpensively and can be used in so many fun ways! What's great about them is that they're super sturdy, they can be cut to any size, and because they're porous, they can be decorated really easily. Pick one up next time you are shopping at a home improvement store. When you get home, paint it with a simple pattern of bright colors (polka dots are my favorite). Line three or four of them in a row and, all of a sudden, you have a simple, stylish cylindrical accent that could work perfectly for a My First Recycling Bin™ or as fun storage bins in a child's room. If your child is 2-4 years old, they can help you decorate the recycling bin. Children at this age can start cutting paper with scissors and can begin to scribble and color. They should be able handle the vegetable stamps, too! And, as they get older they can create more advanced découpage designs.

MILK PAINTS AND VEGETABLE STAMPS
Milk paints are available online or by local providers in many areas. They have been around for centuries and the beautiful thing about them, besides their color, is that they are completely biodegradable and have no VOCS or other added solvents. They are great for your walls and for your craft projects, and are especially perfect for decorating your My First Recycling Bin™. A really fun way to use them is with vegetable stamps!

Here's what you do:

• Gather your My First Recycling Bin™, a few colors of milk paint, and a few vegetables (my favorite prints are cauliflower, potatoes and carrots).
• Cut your veggies into hand-sized pieces for your kids, chopping in different shapes and sizes.
• Have your kids dip the vegetable stamps into the paint and dab the stamps a bit onto some newspaper to get the stamp coated evenly.
• Stamp away on the recycling bin!

DÉCOUPAGE
This is one of the simplest techniques out there. Basically, if you can cut and paste, you can découpage. What you do is make a collage out of a number of fun images or designs in order to create one larger image. When done well, découpage can look like a beautiful painting. I've used this technique on everything from old file cabinets to a chest of drawers. By adhering the images to your My First Recycling Bin™, you can turn something really ordinary into something quite extraordinary. It is a perfect project to do with your kids and it will make your recycling bin sing out loud. To focus even more on the recycling or environmental theme, you could use images of what your recycled items will become in their second lives.

Here's what you do:

• Find and cut out a variety of fun images from books, newspapers, magazines, wallpaper books, etc.
• Adhere the clippings to your box, tube or bin with a glue stick. Place them in an interesting pattern or arrange them in a collage that will create a larger image.
• Brush Matte Medium or Mod Podge over the images — you can find both of these products at any craft or art store.

BRING THE OUTDOORS IN
Dried leaves, twigs, dried flowers, and branches all make wonderful art supplies and they're a perfect medium for decorating your recycling bin. Not only are all of these elements free, but they're very accessible. And by using these on the recycling bin, your kids can enjoy the outdoors inside!

A favorite pattern of mine is as follows:

• Grab your My First Recycling Bin™, a glue gun and several piles of twigs (approximately 1 foot in length).
• Using the glue gun, glue the twigs side-by-side along each side of the box or around the tube, leave the top and bottom free of twigs.
• Gluing carefully, fill all of the empty space with sticks.

Your twig box can be made any time of year and is surprisingly beautiful.

CRITTER PICTURES

Many old books contain beautiful illustrations of botanicals and animals. Illustrations from the turn of the century are particularly detailed and lovely. They add such soul to any wall or surface on which you decide to display them. Simply slice up a used book or make a color copy of these illustrations and place them by your My First Recycling Bin™. Choose prints of animals and little critters your child might see in their own backyard to get your kids even more excited. The bins will be a lot fuller, guaranteed.