Sustainability Corner: Holiday Recycling Tips
By GuestBrought to you by Canton’s Sustainability Committee
Holiday season is a time for family, friends, and making memories. It’s also a busy season for shopping, decorating and baking — which can lead to a lot of extra trash.
Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, American households generate roughly 1,000 extra pounds of waste. That’s according to Republic Services, Canton’s trash/recycling contractor and an industry leader in the U.S. for recycling and non-hazardous waste. But with a little effort, a lot of that extra trash can be recycled, reused, and repurposed.
Holiday lights, tinsel, and other so-called holiday “tanglers” (items that get wrapped around the machinery at the recycling center and cause a whole host of problems) should definitely not go into your recycling bin. You don’t want to put bubble wrap, cellophane, ribbons and bows, or foam packaging into your blue bins either. Wrapping paper and gift bags, though, are fine to recycle, as long as they’re made of plain paper and aren’t sporting glitter or other embellishments. The same goes for holiday cards and envelopes. And instead of using disposable items for holiday parties, opt for plates, utensils and linens that can be washed and reused.
Jeremy Walters, a sustainability ambassador for Republic Services, offered these tips to NBC News for a more environmentally friendly approach to holiday wrapping: “Try wrapping gifts in brown craft paper (which is recyclable) and add a pine cone or sprig from your tree to give your gift wrap some rustic flair … For the kids, wrap their gifts in the comic section from a newspaper. As they eagerly wait to open their gifts, they can read their favorite comic strips!”
Walters emphasized that after we’re done opening gifts, we should flatten all recyclable boxes to save space in our bins, and we should never put our recyclables inside of a box or bag and then place them in the recycling bin. Recyclables need to stay separate and loose.
As for what to do after the holidays, Walters encouraged people to always try to keep useable toys, clothes, electronics and other materials out of the waste stream by taking them to a local thrift store or charity drop-off. For those hard-to-recycle items, Walters suggested using a mail-back program (such as TerraCycle), where you can order a prepaid box and ship it back to a recycling center. Let’s celebrate sustainably!
Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=98647
Posted by Guest
on Dec 16 2022. Filed under Featured Content, Opinion.
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