by Angela V What are your plans for Family Day this year? In B.C. the annual Family Day holiday will be celebrated on Monday, February 18th.
On Family Day, we often spend lots of time together. We plan a family hike, then do some crafting or fun activity together, and then usually get something done for the house. This year, we are working on getting some serious recycling done as a family – an important task to cross off our to-do list.
We regularly save things like dead batteries, large cardboard pieces that don’t fit in our weekly recycling collection, old electronics, and other items that need to go to the recycling centre and will use this day to get it all settled.
Checking around the house and finding things that can be recycled is a fun activity as a family – almost like a scavenger hunt! It also means you get to declutter your home while helping keep our landfills free of items that can be recycled. I like getting the kids involved and teaching them about taking care of the environment by recycling and disposing of certain items responsibly.
Recently I learned that in B.C. we can recycle lights and light bulbs of all shapes and sizes, including LEDs, halogens, incandescent, CFLs, fluorescent tubes and more. Light fixtures are also recyclable in B.C. including standing lamps, holiday string lights, chandeliers, bike lights and more. Since 2010, Product Care Recycling has been operating a light recycling program, and over 40 million lights have been recycled so far. This helps to keep glass, metal, and phosphor powder out of our landfills and waterways, and gives many of these components a second life.
This Family Day we are replacing burnt out light bulbs around the house, and we’ll be sure to take them to our closest recycling location. You can find a full list of locations and more information regarding where to take your specific items based on your own province at Productcare.org– the company also operates light recycling programs in Manitoba, Quebec and PEI.
Spending quality time with your little ones teaching them about recycling and sharing with friends and family who may not know that lights are recyclable could be a great use of your family holiday time.
How often do you visit your local recycling location? If it’s been a while – why not make this Family Day a Recycle Day?
Disclosure: I have partnered with Product Care Recycling and have received compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.
13 Comments on “Family Day: Recycling Together”
We are baking too! Always great when the weather is so bad outside!
That is a great activity to do and it teaches the kids about the importance of recycling, great idea!
I love the fact that in BC you can recycle light bulbs and that light fixtures are also recyclable in B.C.
we live in a small town and the local recycle drop off is minutes away, so we can go as often as needed! and my girl enjoys the sorting involved!
Interesting post. I don’t think we can recycle the lights bulbs and fixtures in my area.
Hi Florence, I just wanted to let you know that if you live in Canada, you can use the recycling locator on productcare.org to check if we have a light bulb recycling program in your area. If we don’t operate where you live, you can always contact your local municipality to see the best option for recycling is. Hope you don’t mind me stepping in, and I hope that helps!
We do our best to recycle absolutely everything we possibly can. One family at a time will eventually make a huge difference.
It’s definitely important that kids learn about recycling at an early age. In Germany we had a special every 3 months when the town would come around collecting big items like washing machines, sofas etc. At the same time trucks and vans would come across from Poland and scour the area for anything they could use. This was a great system since they of course recycled what would otherwise just have been collected to go to the garbage dump. Auctions are also a form of recycling where things don’t end up in a garbage collection.
Recyclying does change so it is good to keep up with the changes. We try to emphasize the importance of it.
Our garbage pick up is every two weeks, where we are allowed one black bag, unlimited blue bags and we have the green cart. I do notice that depending on which province you live in what goes in to the green cart can vary.
That is great that you are teaching them about recycling . I am currently trying to get my parents to recycle more lol.
I recycle my light bulbs and batteries at my local Ikea!
Thanks for sharing. Will have to do this when talking to our kids about the importance of recycling.