18th March Global Recycling Day

Global Recycling Day, celebrated on March 18 every year, is a recycling initiative that encourages us to look at our garbage in a new light. There are several ways to recycle that allow some materials to be reused multiple times.

The yearly celebration is all about getting people to waste as little as possible, reuse whenever possible, and encouraging world leaders to work together to recycle more.

The Global Recycling Foundation, which organises the annual day, says recycling is so important because it stops 700 million of tonnes of carbon emissions each year. 

Polly Faber's new book arrives just in time!

But, there is an abundance of books on this topic, both informative texts and imaginative. Stories include themes of recycling clothes, recycling toys, making things from rubbish...

Do you know Maryann Hoberman's poem 

I Like Old Clothes  by Maryann Hoberman and Patrice Barton is an exuberant celebration of hand-me-down clothes-is just as relevant and accessible today as it was over 30 years ago. The resourceful protagonist  likes old clothes for their "history" and "mystery."

Artists started recycling materials in the early 1900s. Read Found  by Liza Holzl for some really good ideas for what you can make with found objects.

Pablo Picasso used cardboard instead of paint. Marcel Duchamp called a bicycle wheel art and Raoul Hausemann made a sculpture out of an old shopkeeper’s dummy. Instead of using traditional materials such as paint, more and more artists started using found materials like newspapers, old photographs and bits of furniture. And they are still doing it today. Find out how these artists, using found materials, changed the art world. Be inspired to create your own masterpieces!

Rubbish? Don't Throw it Away  by Linda Newbery and Katie Rewse is a lively picture book that shows very young children that recycling can be fun! From pine cones on the grass to old coat- hangers in the cupboard, from empty cardboard boxes to unwanted curtains, used wrapping paper, yogurt pots, odd socks, sinks and fallen leaves What can we do with all this stuff that nobody wants?

What do you do when you grow out of something?

The Red Bicycle  by Jude Isabella and Simone Shin makes the main character  a bicycle that starts its life like so many bicycles in North America, being owned and ridden by a young boy. The boy, Leo, treasures his bicycle so much he gives it a name --- Big Red, but eventually Leo outgrows Big Red, and this is where the bicycle's story takes a turn from the everyday, because Leo decides to donate it to an organization that ships bicycles to Africa. Big Red is sent to Burkina Faso, in West Africa, where it finds a home with Alisetta, who uses it to gain quicker access to her family's sorghum field and to the market. Then, over time, it finds its way to a young woman named Haridata, who has a new purpose for the bicycle --- renamed Le Grand Rouge --- delivering medications and bringing sick people to the hospital.

Are there whole community initiatives?

One Plastic Bag  by Miranda Paul and Elizabeth Zunon tells how in Njau, Gambia one woman solves the problem of plastic bags littering the roads by recycling them.

 Zero Waste  by Allan Drummond highlights a community in Japan that has almost achieved zero waste. Kamikatsu, Japan, is known worldwide for its sanitation innovations. This small community of 1,700 people is leading the way in recycling and upcycling.

These books are a good start to a week of reading about recycling. Look here for more books you will find in the library.

Just for fun, read

Milk and Juice: a Recycling Romance  by Meredith Crandall Brown Once upon a time, in a refrigerator not too far away, a jug of milk and a bottle of juice fell in love. All was bliss until Juice was taken away from its one true love and . . . recycled.