Hosting an Earth-Friendly Freecycle and Recycle Party for Parents

Parents can host their own freecycle and recycle party to exchange craft items, safe toys, clothing, furniture and more. Parents can also get together to ease to share the task of recycling the items that are not always easy to recycle including batteries. By hosting a freecycle party you are not only helping parents, you will also be helping the environment. Hosting an earth-friendly recycling and re-use party is also one way to build community, and put a twist on traditional parental gatherings.

Who to Invite to the Freecycle Party

Invite any friends, neighbors or relatives with children. The party can include parents from your playgroup, daycare center, or from the gym. You can keep the list small, or limited to parents with children of a certain age group, to keep the recycled items age appropriate.

If you have a parenting group you could suggest having a recycle and re-use theme at an upcoming group.

Keep the Freecycle Party Short

The party doesn't have to be long, it can be for an hour or an hour and half, depending on the age of the children. You can keep the children occupied with recycled arts and crafts while the parents are busy freecycling.

What to Freecycle and Re-use

1. Used Batteries for Recycling

Even parents who use rechargeable batteries for most children's toys and other electronics may end up with a sack full of depleted non-rechargeable batteries. These batteries may be the batteries that came already packaged in items, or maybe they were emergency or back-up batteries.

One way to save parents time, and to cut down on gas is to have one parent bring all of these batteries to the local recycling center. Invite parents to bring their dead batteries to the party for recycling. Find a volunteer, or volunteer yourself to recycle everyone's batteries.

Or, the person who lives closest to the local battery recycling center can take all the batteries. To find a battery recycling center near you, go to Earth911.org. In the "Find a Recycling Center" box type in batteries as the item you want to recycle. In the next box type in your zip code.