I don’t want to start quoting songs at you but our children really are the future and we really do need to teach them well from as early an age as possible. We need to teach them that they have a voice and that they really can change the world – one small step at a time which is why I’ve decided to share the small things that my children are doing to change things that are in their power to change.
We started to think about the ways we could change the world after a week where it felt like our letterbox was bombarded with junk mail. I don’t mean the junk mail you receive through the post either as we’ve already stopped most of that by registering on the MPS register – it’s the junk mail that gets hand delivered. Things like pizza menus, leaflets and flyers for services, local political flyers, free newspapers and catalogues that I have no intention of buying anything from. Even the charity bags are wasteful as I always drop our things off at the charity shop directly so I know it’s going to them.
The kids are responsible for keeping our little hall tidy which means that they’re the ones usually putting the vast majority of these leaflets into the recycling bin and it annoys them. It got on their nerves at first as they had to put on their shoes and take it around the side of the house to the recycling bin but once we’d talked about it, it feels wrong to them that we’re recycling so much paper that we didn’t ask for and don’t need. Not to mention the money that people are spending on the mail only to have it thrown away without even having been looked at properly.
So, how can we stop people delivering junk mail to our house?
Easy – we just tell them we don’t want it!
We’ve made a little sign for our door asking that we don’t get any more of the junk mail we don’t want and since we did that about three weeks ago, we’ve only had about three pizza menus posted which is a massive reduction.
Looking back, we think we were getting at least 5 takeaway menus, two free newspapers, at least two charity bags and about 3 additional leaflets every single week. The reduction we’ve seen means that our one little sign has prevented a whole lot of wasted paper.
But that’s not all. Since we’ve had our sign up, three people who’ve visited our house have mentioned it so the kids have made them one too, which means that if everyone else we’ve made one for receive the same as we do (they say do) then we have cut down on lots of unnecessary waste. In fact, over a year we will have helped stop a total of 1040 takeaway menus, 416 newspapers, 416 charity bags and around 612 other leaflets.
That’s a great way to start with changing the world in my opinion.
They’ve even made you a little sign that you can print out:
It would be great if you could tell me in the comments below if you’ll be using the sign or even better, making your own with your children. It’s a great motivator if you can tell children just how well they’re doing isn’t it?
I’ll be sharing some more ways that we’ve been changing the world recently in a couple of weeks.
