Wenona Napolitano
My family goes through a lot of yogurt, mainly my toddler. He’s on this thing where just about all he eats is yogurt and he’s picky about it. Wants it straight from the little containers not in a regular old bowl. So we end up with a lot of yogurt cups which aren’t accepted for recycling at the local drop off site.
So I have come up with easy and fun ways to use the yogurt cups for crafts with my kids.
So far we have created cats, bats, pumpkins, skeletons and more for Halloween, Christmas bells and penguins for the winter holidays, turtles and frogs for spring and bunnies for Easter.
The cast of yogurt cup characters keeps growing. I am thinking butterflies for this weekend.
They are simple to create. I paint them outside with spray paint (I know, probably not the most eco-craft supply but it works) and then we use craft foam for heads, legs, wings or whatever the creation calls for. Sometimes we use google eyes, sometimes we just paint them on. Sometimes we add pipecleaners or whatever else we may find in the craft boxes.
It all started with me just searching through my craft box to see what I could create. I have tons of craft supplies so that was no problem.
Now it’s a regular thing for my daughter and I to add another yogurt cup critter to our menagerie.
It’s a fun and relatively green craft. We save yogurt cups from the landfill and have fun using our creativity to create new creatures.
Those are awesome and I applaud your efforts! Not sure if you are aware, but most yogurt containers are #5’s, and Whole Foods and a couple other eco-conscious retailers put bins outside their stores to collect and recycle #5’s, which are excellent candidates for recycling but not accepted by many municipalities.
I don’t have a Whole Foods in my area. I think the closest one is over an hour drive from my house and I’ve checked a couple places that collect plastic but so far no one local takes #5
Omg, those are so cute!!
Why not buy the yogurt in larger containers and refill a few cups you keep for that purpose for your toddler? That way you’ll reduce your cost and your waste, and your son will still get to eat out of the cups as he wishes.
Love the penguins. What kind of paint did you use? Is there something than you would need to do so that the paint doesn’t chip off?
Very cute, your bunnies would have been very handy at easter next to our coke bottle bunnies. go look
http://www.upcycle.co.za/ideas/plastic/bottles/bottles.html
it is here on our sister site.
I use an inexpensive acrylic paint and then a coat of ModPodge, protects the paint.