Recycling for Teens

Recycle Glass

• Help your teen transform old glass bottles into new decor for his room. Gather different-shaped glass jars and plastic bottles and turn them into fantastic-looking vases. All you need to do is wash them out and dry them completely. Then, color them with metallic or glittery spray paint to give them a lustrous metallic finish. Now your teen has some interesting art pieces in which to store his spare change, or vases for branch arrangements to liven up his room. He can also create designs on the glass with tape and then spray paint the glass and remove the tape. Use the decorative jar as a pencil holder or drop an LED tea light in the jar to turn it into a candle holder. Have a young beach lover fill a clear jar with some sand and a few interesting shells for a unique souvenir of a trip to the beach.

Reinvent a Wardrobe

• Donating old clothes to charity might be a good solution to clearing up space in your closet, but if your teen heads straight to the trash with her outgrown clothing, help her up-cycle them into something she would love to keep and use. Turn old souvenir T-shirts into a unique and brand-new quilt that she can curl up in at bedtime, or use a T-shirt pattern to turn squares of the souvenir shirts into an entirely new article of clothing. Old jeans that are ripped in the knees can be cut above the knee to make a skirt. Just rip open the inside seams and sew the front and back seams together. She can make a new purse from the jeans instead; cut them off at the bottom of the zipper, sew up the bottom and make a purse strap from the excess denim fabric. Jazz these up by sewing on glittery sequins or colorful beads, or decorate them with glitter fabric glue.

Recycled Paper Crafts

• Engage your teens to attempt some innovative projects that turn seemingly ordinary paper into something imaginative and useful. Start with something simple, tissue paper or cupcake liner paper flowers to fill an up-cycled vase, for instance. Create beautiful papier-mache jewelry boxes in which to keep earrings or other trinkets with ordinary brown bag paper, magazine pages or newspaper; or use pages from the old magazine to make a woven magazine purse or wallet. He can also make a decorative piece of wall art from old cardboard and magazines. Cut out his favorite magazine pictures and glue them on the cardboard to create a collage. To make the collage long lasting, apply a coat of polyvinyl acetate over the collage when it's complete.

Tin Can Creations

• If your teen has taken an interest in gardening -- or if you're hoping she will soon -- help her to turn a large coffee can into a helpful gardening tool by puncturing the bottom with several holes to make a watering can, or paint it a beautiful color to turn it into a flower pot. For a money-savvy teen who likes to save for a rainy day, turn a tin can into a coin bank for keeping spare change. She can also make lanterns from tin cans using a hammer and some nails. Simply puncture the can with some holes following a design pattern, such as a star, heart or flower. Pull out the nails and place an LED tea light inside.