Tips for a Greener Holiday
The holidays are upon us, which means the decorations are out. The holidays can be a beautiful time of the year; however they can also be a very wasteful time of the year. From trees cut down for decorations, to wasted strands of lights, not to mention all of the paper waste from gifts. Americans annually throw away four million tons of just paper trash from gift wrap and shopping bags and approximately 2.6 billion holiday cards are sold each year, which is enough to fill a football field 10 stories high (Source: RecycleWorks).
Household waste increases by more than 25 percent from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, which adds up to an extra one million tons of trash in the landfills each week. Here are a few tips to help you have a green holiday, and save some money.
- Instead of sending paper holiday cards, send an electronic holiday greeting. You’ll save tons of money and help to reduce paper waste.
- Save and reuse paper products from year to year such as ribbon, gift bags, tissue paper, and bows. If you open gifts carefully, you may even be able to salvage some of the wrapping paper and reuse it next year. According to RecycleWorks, if every family reused two feet of holiday ribbon, the amount of ribbon saved would equal 38,000 feet and would be enough to tie a bow around the entire planet.
- According to the EPA, about 40 percent of all battery sales occur during the holiday season. When giving electronic gifts and batteries for Christmas, give rechargeable batteries and a battery charger instead. This could cut down on the amount of harmful materials thrown away as batteries die and need to be replaced and can save the gift receiver a lot of money in the future.
- Instead of giving every single member of your family a gift, try doing a different type of gift exchange. Draw names from a hat of which person you are to give a gift to so you only have to buy one. Or your family can have a guy/girl gift exchange where the girls buy one gift for a girl and a guy buys a gift for a guy and a white elephant gift exchange occurs.
- When decorating with lights, use LED holiday lights instead, which can use up to 95 percent less energy than traditional lights and will last up to 100,000 hours when used indoors. Also, be sure to turn lights off when everyone goes to bed. It is a waste of energy to leave them on when everyone is sleeping.
As a service reminder, Millennium Waste and the Quad Cities Landfill are closed on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. If you have any questions, please complete the form on the Contact page.
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