Editor’s note: The following post was originally published on Green and Clean Mom. “Green & Clean Mom can inspire you to try a little harder, be a catalyst for change and to offer you some new tips and news on how to be the green, sexy and sassy mom…I know you are!”
Markers dry out and then what, they end up in our landfills. Children love them and if they are washable and non-toxic, parents and teachers love them. I know how to recycle and reuse crayons but markers? I’ve never known how to recycle them and even when I tweeted about it and did some research I couldn’t dig up much on the recycling of markers. One of my favorite sites, Earth 911 couldn’t even help me. Disappointing. The best answer I could come up with came from Yahoo answers. Yes, Yahoo answers. What I learned is this, there is no green way to dispose of child friendly, non-toxic, washable markers. Sorry. I wish that there was. The plastic is just not recyclable and it won’t bio-degrade…that I know of. I’d love to learn otherwise and I’m sure my readers would too. If you know something share but I’ve written to the companies and I’ve gone to the store and there are no tips on the packages for recycling.
In the meantime, I’m going to make sure the caps are kept on the markers last as long as possible. I’m also going to promote reusing the markers and the caps on the markers. How?
To reuse the markers and caps:
1. Take a small cup of water, dip the marker into the water and whala you have a watercolor paint brush. The children have fun and you are reusing the ink that you thought was dried up but with some water, you have a marker paint brush.
2. Re-Use the caps and put them on your fingers to finger paint with…my children love this!
Read more ideas for reusing markers at Green and Clean Mom!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I was wondering this very thing today. My kids are always leaving the caps off and I feel like I’m on cap patrol constantly to avoid chucking them. Another 4 year old taught me the water trick to revive them but it doesn’t work for very long. Someone needs to invent something! Come on all you green momtrepreneurs!
I have always cherished my markers from very young. I discovered that you can pop the back end off and add just a few drops of water. you get almost double life out of the maker. by the third boost they get a much lighter. you could then gut the markers and use just the tube, cut it in to 1/2 inch pieces with a razor pipe cutter (clean cuts) and string them as beads.
Hey I thought this same thought and of course it’s recyclable! There’s always a way! How can you have that much plastic for that little marker life? Well there can be multiple solutions I think, one of them being: selling individual inside felt parts so they’re replacable or having a shipment of these markers back to the plants so they can replace them a resell them and any number of these things so I myself am going to email crayola and hopefully suede them toward some sort of ecological compromise because just think of how many markers per year just one school goes through and how many schools there are. Too many to add.
I just read about soaking them in a bowl of warm water overnight, followed by letting them sit for a day, then, storing them with the cap for a day. . . . A couple of days later voila: new markers! I also read about injecting permanent markers with nail polish remover to revive them. I wonder if injecting water would work for crayolas???? I’m going to test it out.
you can always make a pipe out of it