Over 60 million crayons get tossed every year. That adds up to over half a million pounds of waste that ends up in landfills when it should be in the hands of a child, helping them to color and create.
The Crayon Initiative truly is the definition of small changes making a huge impact, but if you're trying to explain the movement to a skeptic, it's going to take more than a few numbers to do it effectively. Here are some points you can inform them about and some resources you can give to them so they can understand the truly life-changing impact The Crayon Initiative has on children all around the world.
There's beauty in simplicity. There are plenty of organizations out there who try to do it all or take a handful of approaches to try to help a cause. That's great, but here at The Crayon Initiative, we focus on doing one thing: collecting perfectly good crayons and making sure they don't end up in the garbage. In doing so, not only are we able to cut back on waste, but we're also able to supply children's hospitals with much-needed art supplies.
Without The Crayon Initiative, it may leave children who are undergoing extensive recoveries and procedures without art supplies. Otherwise, they would need to get their supplies from family purchases or from money that could be better spent elsewhere, like on life-saving programs, research, or essential medical supplies. The Crayon Initiative helps lift the burden off of hospitals and, even more so, off of the children's families.
The Crayon Initiative has carved out a niche by identifying multiple high-volume donors. When many people first hear about The Crayon Initiative, they assume it's a program that relies entirely on goodwill donations from parents, individuals, and schools who have half-used crayons lying around or the means of getting people to buy and donate new crayons. While this can provide crayons for the program, The Crayon Initiative is more focused on collecting used crayons before they make it to the landfill.
By reaching out to restaurants, such as BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, where children are handed crayons at every table, The Crayon Initiative is able to reduce waste while tapping into a free resource of slightly used crayons that would otherwise get thrown away. After all, restaurants cannot reuse crayons after a child has touched them, no matter how much they were (or weren't) used.
After sanitization, a large box of about 25 pounds of crayons can produce enough materials to provide 125 hospital children with their own 8-pack. A mega box of 100 pounds of crayons can provide the same to over 1,000 hospital children. If that's not enough to convince them that The Crayon Initiative makes a real impact, we don't know what will.
Once you get them behind the idea, send them in the direction of your local Crayon Collection or ask them to visit the website to learn more.