By: Maggie Fechtman and Katie Hudachek
The holidays are coming quick! Each holiday season, America alone will accumulate 25% more trash than average.The increase of waste products is mostly due to extra wrapping paper, plastics, shopping bags, and food waste people use to package gifts and prepare for holiday parties. This season, take steps to reduce your impact by reading our tips! Use them all or only use one, and spread the word to your friends and family! Try to implement these strategies and share them with friends and family! Your other role as an environmentalist is to spread knowledge about saving our planet. This year, give the gift of a healthier planet to future generations.
Post Party Food Waste
After holiday parties each year, an abundance of food waste ends up in landfills across the planet. If you are considering throwing away a lot of food, try putting all salvageable food in one container and donating it a homeless shelter, instead of putting it in the trash.
When grocery shopping before parties, try to buy foods that are organic and can be composted. Also at the store, look for biodegradable utensils or other reusable utensils to use at the meal. For the food scraps of organic material that are not suitable to be donated, they can turned into compost for gardening. Utilizing these tips will minimize the food waste you are throwing away.
At your holiday party, instead of serving food on paper/plastic plates, consider serving on your everyday glass/china wear. This will prevent the amount of plastic/paper used. If that is not possible, use plastic and wash them after to reuse in the future. You cannot recycle paper plates with any sort of food residue on them. Try your best to stay away from using single use materials as they account for the majority of trash that end of in landfills.
Present Trash
The most garbage created during the holiday season is from presents. Below is a complete list of what can be recycled and what cannot.
Because of online shopping, a large amount of cardboard is being created and thrown away. Cardboard is a great material to recycle because it’s clean, easy to reprocess and every ton of it that's reclaimed saves 17 trees. Also, you can reuse cardboard! Cardboard boxes can be reused as boxes for gifts the next holiday season.
Bows and ribbons cannot be recycled because of their texture. However, they are rarely torn and can be reused multiple times. Save your bows and ribbons from year to year in order to reuse them as much as possible. All wrapping paper can be recycled if it does not have any texture on it like metallic or velvet.
Here is a list of what is recyclable after Christmas:
Recycle/Reuse
-Reuse bows and ribbons
-Recycle wrapping paper
-Recycle OR reuse cardboard boxes
DON’T RECYCLE
-Any wrapping paper with any texture like metallic or velvet.
-Textured bows or ribbons
Have a happy eco-friendly holiday!
If you want to research further, here are sites we used to gather info:
