Reuse those Crayola Markers

Written by greenandcleanmom on Dec - 04 | Comments | Related : Green Parenting, Green Solutions and Tips, Green Sprouts

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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!

3. Talk to your children about putting the caps on the markers to use them for as long as possible. This alone can reduce the waste of the markers.

4. Try to use crayons instead of markers because from what I’ve experienced, I can recycle them personally and they can be recycled by companies.

5. Write Crayloa and other companies and urge them to make recyclable markers and ask for their suggestions. I just saw a 52 pack of markers at the store today and all I could think of was that they would end up in the landfill.

What else can you Re-Use the markers and the caps for? You tell me. Any ideas, share them here. I’d love to hear and so would teachers, parents, greenies and anyone sensible, I imagine.

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Isabella

At Christmas time, we gathered red,green, and yellow caps from my son's preschool and glued them open side down on a wreath pegboard (recycled from a cousin's school project)cut out. We took some of the markers w/caps on and placed them in a salt dough advent wreath and created paper flames for them. During the spring/summer, we use the markers as garden markers when planting seeds and bulbs.

Tara

Found your site because I was just going through my kids' markers getting rid of the dry ones, and was wondering if I could recycle them (i'm a recylcling addict). I'm sad to hear you can't, and I'm going to email crayola, roseart, etc. about it. So you got me thinking of ideas of how to reuse them, and I like the painting one, my daughter will love it, and practically came up with it on her own, as she just minutes ago was getting her pink maker wet trying to make it work, which i've done, but never thought about just painting w/ them. So then I was thinking how all the lids are so colorful and if you just drilled a hole the the other end of the caps, then voila you would have beads for necklaces or whatever for the kids to play w/. Might even be a great school project to have kids donate all dried out markers for painting w/ and all the caps could be collected and some helpful parents could take them home and drill holes in them. I'm quite intrigued by this idea. Thanks for the info :)

Meghan

If your marker dries out because the cap was left off, but you know there's still ink in it, tape a string to the bottom end. The spin the string around your head, and it will move the ink back into the tip of the marker. Just be careful when you take off the lid, because if you've spun it too forcefully, there will be a bunch of extra ink on the tip.

RoseyJ8

Hi Green Mom,
Here's a little something that I've done with old crayons.
Remove the paper on the outside of the crayon stick
Chop the crayons up into little pieces
Sprinkle the pieces onto a piece of fabric, a tea towel or a t-shirt
Place brown paper under the textile and on top of the crayons
Iron with a hot iron.
Keep changing the paper until all the wax is absorbed and only the color pattern remains.
This is a great rainy day activity to do with the kids
It brings new life to old t-shirts
Cheers,
Rosey J

Rebecca

This is something I used to do as a kid, but got in trouble for... Soak the tip of the marker in water and then holding it tight fling it downward so that the 'ink' comes flying off and you get a cool splatter paint effect. You could try doing it on brown paper bags for gift wrap but I'm not sure if the colors would saturate enough. Warning: the reason we got in trouble was because when you fling the marker it kinda goes everywhere, including the walls of the garage.. might not make a good indoor activity. =)

<abbr>Rebeccas last blog post..New Study on Autism and Vaccines!</abbr>

Green & Clean Mom

Great idea Janelle! I'm going to do this and start a campaign! Fabulous idea. Be proactive about this and make a statement that we want markers we can recycle! I love it!

Beaded Desert

Well, depending on the age of your kids, you could reuse the caps in crafty ways. You could drill a hold through the closed off end. Then paint the caps or re-use magazine or other papers and decoupage them around the caps. Viola! Easy and fun "beads" to make bracelets and necklaces from. If you're real handy with a drill, you could also drill through the sides to string as a pendant. Makes for fun "toy" jewelry for dress up time.

Janelle Sorensen

Maybe we should start mailing the dried up markers back to the manufacturers to make a statement. If we all did it during the same week, it would have even more impact.

Another reuse idea: hot glue them around an old frame for hanging all the lovely drawings your kids make.