It happens every year. The cookie sale ends and you’re left wondering what to do with your hundreds of empty cases and leftover cookie boxes. Here are some of our favorite ideas to cut down on landfill waste and have a little fun with cardboard!

1. Build a Box Maze! Put the girls’ engineering and ingenuity to use with a box maze challenge. Collect cookie cases (and other size boxes) from your service unit and have the older girls create a maze. Then let the younger girls go through and see who can navigate the maze the fastest. This would make an awesome service unit event or larger bridging activity. You can even make a maze for your pets like the man in this video did. Your only limit is your creativity (and storage space)!

2. Create Journals and Scrapbooks. Girls love to share their activities by doodling pictures, writing, collecting memories, and share their world with their favorite adults. Before a trip or at the beginning of the troop year have the girls make journal covers out of their favorite cookie boxes and at the end of the year let them put together a scrapbook to record all the fun they had. Need more ideas? Pinterest is full of crafts and other upcycling ideas.

3. Make Cardboard Fire Starters! Cooking over a fire is just as big a part of the Girl Scout tradition as selling cookies. What better way to recycle your old cookie cases than to make them part of the outdoor cooking experience? Check out this Venture site for more Firestarters and use the wax soaked corrugated cardboard recipe for your next campfire.

4. Create Charms. Girls love bracelets and beads and what better way to commemorate the end of a sale than by making a cookie box bead to add to their favorite charm bracelet. Here’s a video tutorial on the process.

5. Build a Solar Oven. Help girls explore alternative energy sources by harnessing the power of the sun to make a creative snack. Never built one before? Here are Cardboard Box Solar Oven Instructions as well as some great recipes.

And for those of you who want more ideas, here are 31 things you can make with a cardboard box that will blow your kids’ minds! So what are you waiting for? Grab some boxes, your troop, and start building your own cardboard creations today.