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Summer brings clear skies, warm days and excellent opportunities to spend quality time with family and friends. Choosing a “staycation” over international travel is a fantastic way to save money while significantly lowering your carbon footprint.
To help you make the school holidays even more eco-friendly, Bywaters has compiled five engaging, sustainable activities that will keep children entertained while teaching them about the natural world.
1. Organise a Local Beach Clean
Plastic pollution poses a critical threat to marine life, with public litter accounting for a third of the plastic waste found on UK beaches. Organising a beach or riverbank clean is a powerful way to teach young people about environmental responsibility. Picking up plastic directly helps protect marine wildlife, and it has a proven positive effect on mental wellbeing. Research indicates that 80 per cent of participants experience a noticeable boost in positivity after taking part in a beach clean.
2. Bake Plant-Based Treats
Baking is a wonderful, interactive pastime for all ages. Giving your recipes a vegan twist makes them much more environmentally friendly. The production of dairy items like butter and milk generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Plant-based ingredients carry a much lower carbon footprint and require far less land and water to produce.
You can create delicious desserts using simple swaps, such as replacing cow’s milk with coconut milk, or using ground flaxseed instead of eggs. You can even use aquafaba (the liquid from a tin of chickpeas) as an excellent replacement for egg whites to create a plant-based Eton mess.
3. Build an On-Site Worm Farm
Worms are nature’s ultimate recyclers. By tunnelling through the earth, they aerate the soil and allow vital nutrients and water to flow deep into the ground. They also convert household vegetable scraps into rich compost, diverting organic waste away from landfills.
To build a simple worm farm, use a large, ventilated container filled with layers of sand, dry leaves, moist soil and vegetable peelings. Because worms thrive in dark, damp spaces, keep the container in a cool, sheltered area. This project provides a fantastic hands-on sensory experience while teaching children about food waste reduction.
4. Create a Balcony or Garden Vegetable Patch
Growing your own food teaches children about soil health, plant lifecycles and nutrition. Best of all, home-grown produce involves no chemical pesticides, plastic packaging or transportation miles.
You do not need a massive garden to get started. A raised bed or a few simple pots on a balcony work perfectly for quick-growing crops like radishes, spring onions, lettuce and tomatoes. For younger children, you can bring the project to life by linking it to classic stories like Peter Rabbit or Oliver’s Vegetables.
5. Craft Homemade Bird Feeders
Making a bird feeder introduces children to ecological sustainability and wildlife conservation. Encouraging wild birds into your garden also provides excellent organic pest control, reducing the need for harmful chemical bug sprays.
You can easily construct feeders using everyday household items. Empty orange peels make superb biodegradable bowls that can be filled with birdseeds, nuts or peanut butter. Once hung outside, children can keep a nature diary to log, photograph and identify the different bird species that visit.
Looking for more ways to protect the environment this season? Contact the Bywaters team today to learn how our sustainable recycling initiatives support local communities across London.
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