Hope everyone is having a good weekend and using the extra time to catch up on sleep. Exercise is overrated so take another nap. For those of you who checked out my blog last week on clothes recycling, I decided to expand on that by writing a story which should be posting on the website very soon.
This weekend I bought my dog some food at Target and notice they brought out all their Christmas decorations. They probably had them up on Nov. 1 but this was the first time I was aware of the display. For goodness sake, isn’t there any decoration that has to do with Thanksgiving? According to department stores, there aren’t. For this week I decided to find information on how to recycle for the holiday season.
My folks have been using an artificial Christmas tree for the last five years. It’s nice enough but there’s just something about the scent of a pine tree on Christmas morning. The City of Tucson website provides tips for people on what to recycle during the holiday season. Here’s a short list of what they suggest to recycle and what not to recycle:
Please DO recycle:
• greeting cards: recycle unless they have metallic, glitter, plastic or other non-paper coatings
• paperboard boxes that clothing or shoes might come in
• fiberboard packing materials (like egg cartons).
Please DO NOT recycle:
• plastic packaging, toys, etc.; the only recyclable plastics are #1 and #2 bottles and jars with necks and screw-on tops
• wrapping paper
• tissue paper
• ribbon, string or twine
• tinsel
• ornaments
• anything with food residue
• paper towels, napkins, plates, cups
When I saw the DO recycle list, I thought these things could be recycled at anytime, not just during the holiday season. Then not a minute after saying that came the TreeCycle portion of the site. The program was formed in 1997 and it said that 229,000 trees have been collected and reused. There’s also a list that reveals different locations to take Christmas trees. They collect them from Dec. 26 to Jan. 9.
The CharMeck website also has tips for holiday recycling but it also gives people gift ideas and ways to wrap gifts. For instance, there was one way to wrap presents that I thought was funny. It said, “Use old homework pages to wrap gifts. Grandparents love to see them.” If I gave my grandparents a present that was wrapped in my homework, I could hear my grandpa Suarez say, “What is this, are you too cheap to wrap my present. There’s too much red ink on this.”
On the site there are also tips for New Year’s. Of course it says to make your New Year’s Resolution to be more involved with waste reduction.
I found a website out of Fontana, Calif. with more holiday tips and facts. It said during the holiday season (Thanksgiving to New Year’s) 25 percent more trash is thrown away. That is 5 million tons more trash. This site gives more advice about what to get people that would help the environment. It informs shoppers to buy recycled paper cards. When it comes to holiday cards, it said 2.65 billion are sold in the U.S. and that was enough to fill a football field 10 stories high. That’s tough to imagine. What was also interesting in this site was that if every American family wrapped three presents in re-used materials, it would save paper that would cover 45,000 football fields. Check out the rest of the site, there’s more facts like these and it provides ideas for those who are stuck on gift ideas for family and friends.
Hope this information was beneficial for the holiday shopping season that will be here soon enough. Happy Veterans Day to all those who have and still are serving our country. Have a good week everyone and stay relaxed.
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