5 Easy Steps to Build a Home Recycling Center

Location

• The first step to building a home recycling center is to designate a location in your home to serve as the center. Because recyclable products, unless thoroughly washed, can smell bad when left at room temperature, the center should ideally be situated in an area not immediately within your home's living quarters, such as in your garage or a shed.

Receptacles

• Once you have chosen a suitable location for the home recycling center, your next step is to assemble the necessary receptacles in which to house the recycled goods. Provided your home has a blue box recycling program, you can use different blue boxes to help gather the recycled goods. If one or two blue boxes aren't enough, purchase heavy-duty plastic boxes.

Signs

• Especially if you have young children whom you want to encourage to recycle, it's important that your household's recycling center has helpful signs. Otherwise, children may dispose of garbage in a recycling bin or put canned goods in a bin designated for paper goods. Above each container, place a sign identifying what objects are suitable for that receptacle. Examples may be paper, plastic and aluminum.

Special Items

• Depending on where you live, your recycling service may not pick up every type of recyclable good. Often, products with specific recycling numbers stamped on their bottoms aren't picked up at the curb, but you can drop them off at a local depot. When this is the case, designate a separate bin for these products and teach your children to inspect each recyclable container, identify its number and sort it accordingly.

Incentives and Roles

• Teenage children might be ambivalent toward your household recycling plan, and it's your job to educate them on the benefits of recycling. To make recycling fun for the entire family, give incentives to your children. For example, the child who adds the most items to a bin in any given week wins a small prize. Additionally, assign roles to the members of your family. One child can take the blue boxes to the curb, while another sorts through the boxes to ensure items are in their proper location.