Weekend fun for my family included a trip to the fabulous Cleveland Museum of Natural History.  A visit in their Discovery Center had me tucked next to my daughter (at an all-too-small-table for an adult, mind you!) making leaf rubbings to decorate their tree mural (as every Ohioan is desperately awaiting the arrival of spring and the first sign of leaves!)

Immediately I was drawn to the crayons they had on the table.  They weren’t your run of the mill Crayolas, mind you… they had pizzazz!  My daughter loved them too and handed me a card with a simple “here you go, Mom…”.  Low and behold a recycled crayon recipe! (She knows me too well!)

My first thought was, “well… of course!  Why wouldn’t I recycle crayons?”  My second thought was, “I need to share this…” so (in case I’m not the ONLY mom who has never done this!) here’s the recipe:

• Remove the paper from broken crayons
• Place foil baking cups and their paper separators in the wells of a muffin pan
• Fill cups ½ full with crayons (you can choose the same color family or multiple colors)
• Put the pan in a 225 degree oven for about 15 minutes
• Remove them from the oven and, if you’ve used multiple colors, give them a quick swirl with a toothpick
• Cool to room temperature, remove from cups, break in half or quarters, and get ready to CREATE!

You can use these at home, give them as party favors or gifts, or even donate them to a school or art class.  If you’re wondering about the real value of recycling crayons consider this… statistics say that 90% of crayons get discarded once they get broken or the tips wear away, so yes… this is a worthy project.

And considering there are literally BILLIONS and BILLIONS of crayons sold and distributed each year (think how many you’ve left on restaurant tables!) and I must have at least a million broken crayons littering my house, I’ll never cry over an unloved, broken crayon again… I’ll just recycle ‘em!