Recycle Your Crayons

Recycling Your Crayons

Recycling Your Crayons

For the past few months, I’ve really been thinking about how spoiled some of us are to be living in a first world country with our first world problems. Thank you, @firstworldpains (twitter) and /r/Firstworldproblems (reddit).

My biggest first world problem currently is the extreme guilt I’m starting to feel over seemingly insignificant things that we take for granted. For example, my daughter has an abundance of broken crayons that could easily be tossed away. She’s acquired them from birthdays, Christmases, Easter, parties, and restaurants. I’d say she has at least two dozen broken ones that we haven’t spent a dime on. She has this little nub crayons that children in third world countries would love to have.

Alright, let’s get to the point of this post: Recycling your crayons. Probably one of the easiest things to do. Ever.

List of items that are optimal to have for this:

  • Newspaper or something to line your working space
  • Crayons – broken or not. Whatever you would like to use
  • Empty food cans, rinsed well — one for each colour of crayon. Pinch one side of the can to create a spout
  • A pot with boiling water or a wood stove to warm
  • A mould of some sort (You can get moulds at most craft shops)
  • Oven mits or similar for your hands 🙂
Basically, all you’re going to do is melt the crayons down and then pour them into the moulds. Exciting, no? Easy, yes?
Boil water in a pot – just a few inches of water. Place cans with crayons in them inside of the boiling water and keep it on the stove, shimmying the cans every so often. Once the crayons are fully melted, pour them into the moulds and let them set over night. In the morning, punch the new crayons out and enjoy!

While writing this blog, youtube wouldn’t load the Christmas songs 🙁  #firstworldpains

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