Recycling, reuse can greatly cut holiday waste

Those who don’t recycle could do a world of good by resolving to start in the new year. Better yet, they could start immediately, since from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, Americans throw away more trash than any other time of year.

The seasonal extra waste amounts to 25 million tons of garbage nationwide. That includes not only plastic, glass and aluminum bottles and cans from holiday entertaining, but also all the paper and plastic that comes with gift-giving.

“We can change the traditional holiday habit of tearing open presents and throwing away wrapping paper and cardboard,” said Janice McClendon, resource management specialist for the Stanislaus County Department of Environmental Resources. “We can recover these materials if residents use their curbside recycling program. Recycling holiday paper is a better alternative than burning it or throwing it into the trash.”

Within the city of Modesto, the closest thing to curbside recycling is the green organic waste can each residence has. Holiday waste including paper gift wrap, thin cardboard gift boxes, corrugated mailing boxes and greeting cards can be deposited in those cans and will be ground with yard waste to form compost.

Packaging materials, such as foam peanuts and bubble wrap, are another matter. Put those in your black garbage can and they’ll simply add to the landfills. To an extent, local recycling options are available.

American Recycling Co. on Morgan Road is a commercial and industrial recycling company whose forte is cardboard, said sales representative Linden Coffee, but it will accept almost all types of holiday waste. People may get a few pennies for cardboard boxes, he said, but mostly the reward is knowing they kept waste from, well, going to waste.

The recycler will accept gift paper, plastic bags, even the strings of mini lights with the push-in bulbs. People always are throwing away those lights because they can be such a pain when a bulb burns out and darkens some or all of a string, Coffee said. “I just spent a fortune this year going LED” after being frustrated by the little incandescent lights, he said. “I’m always bringing in stuff from home. I bring in the lights that don’t work.”

The only thing American Recycling doesn’t help with is foam packing peanuts. “Styrofoam we accept, but not the peanuts,” Coffee said. Styrofoam is made of extruded polystyrene foam and is the rigid material that often protects electronics. So if you receive a new flat-screen TV from Santa, the recycler will take that packing material.

Packing peanuts are made of expanded polystyrene, a pliable foam. The website Earth911 offers some tips on recycling them, but the simplest answer might be to reuse them when mailing gifts for other occasions – or even next Christmas.

Reuse is a huge way of keeping waste out of landfills. “I’m a reuse person,” Veronica Phillips posted on The Modesto Bee’s Facebook page. “My husband thinks I’m crazy but I refold the tissue paper, fold up the bags, salvage as many bows and ribbons as possible and use them the following year. Every year, we are gifted treats in tins, so we save those and gift in those. I’ve also swiped some wrapping paper for packing up my Christmas decorations. We still wrap but every year we are wrapping less and less this way.”

And Rebekah Schultz Borges posted, “This year, I’m putting everyone’s gifts into reusable shopping bags. Fun characters for the kids still, but bags that can be used again and again.”

Giving presents in reusable fabric bags, or baskets or paper gift bags that can be used year after year is a great “green” alternative to wrapping paper, says the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery. In future years, consider sending e-cards or an e-newsletter rather than paper greeting cards, CalRecycle also urges.

The state, county and Modesto also remind residents to “treecycle.” Christmas trees commonly are turned into mulch, or chipped and used for playground material, hiking trails, paths and walkways.

Modesto crews will begin picking up untreated Christmas trees in January as part of the normal green waste collection. Remove all items from the tree: ornaments, tinsel, topper, stand, etc. If a tree is more than 6 feet tall, it should be cut so that no piece exceeds 6 feet. Place trees curbside to be collected with regular yard trimmings or cut into pieces small enough to put in the green waste can with the lid closed.

Trees with flocking, paint or fireproofing cannot be composted and will not be collected by green waste crews. The trees may be cut up and put in residents’ black garbage cans or taken to the nearest garbage transfer station.

This story was originally published December 23, 2015 at 4:27 PM with the headline "Recycling, reuse can greatly cut holiday waste."