Crazy Crayons Give New Life to Old Crayons

Remember that segment on Sesame Street where they go to the Crayola factory? As kids we watched with wonder as millions of shiny new crayons were produced on the assembly line. In fact, more than 12 million crayons are made in the U.S. everyday – which equals about 120,000 pounds. That’s 60 Tons of Crayons made with petroleum based wax every day.

Crazy Crayons are hand-crafted, multi-colored crayons made from unwanted crayons collected through the National Crayon Recycling Program. Since 1993, this recycling education and community service program has made it possible to stop more than 45,000 pounds of unwanted crayons from going into landfills with the help from school and organization educators and kids across this country. The Crayon Recycling Program takes old, rejected, broken crayons to a better place, where they’ll be recycled into fresh, new crayons.

When the shipments of unwanted crayons arrive for recycling, the boxes are taken to a local work center, employing people with developmental disabilities to sort the crayons. Then the crayons come back to the Crazy Crayon workshop to be melted down, strained, sterilized, and hand poured into beautiful, functional works of art for kids to enjoy.

I gave these out as party favors for Sam’s first birthday (very eco-chic of me but not terribly bright as they are small enough to be choking hazards for children under 3…) I am currently creating quite the collection of broken, bitten, and otherwise destructed crayons to be sent off to Crazy Crayon-land.

For information on donating your old crayons, organizing a crayon collection, or purchasing Crazy Crayons, visit www.crazycrayons.com

Note: No one gave me anything to write this. I just think this is neat.


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