Christmas is Friday, and with its arrival - or departure, depending on how you look at it - comes lots of additional waste. Tons, in fact ... literally tons. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, household waste increases by more than 25 percent, and trash created annually from gift wrap and shopping bags is about 4 million tons.
Here are more staggering statistics, courtesy of Saturday's Chattanooga Times-Free Press:
- If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet.
- If every American family wrapped just three presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.
- The 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high.
- If every person sent one less card, approximately 19 million pounds of paper would be saved - the equivalent of 160,000 trees.
So what can one family do about all this? The answer is simple: Recycle! Many of the things you'd throw away while cleaning up the Christmas morning mess can actually be recycled, including gift wrap (no metallic papers or bows), paper shopping bags, toy boxes, cardboard mailing boxes, cards, and envelopes.
City residents enjoy biweekly curbside recycling pickup; others can drop items off at one of Chattanooga's many recycling convenience centers. Click here for convenience center locations. Anyone can drop off their recyclables at these locations - you do not need to be a resident of Chattanooga ... or even Hamilton County! To take advantage of curbside pickup, you must be enrolled in the local recycling program. Click here to sign up, or here to check your area's recycling schedule (only enrolled homes will appear in database).
And yes, for those of you who were wondering about the photo at the top of this post, that is my post-Christmas recycling pile - tree and all - from last year. Scary, huh?
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