Green Thinking: Waste Produced From X-mas

First of all I would like to state that I'm glad to now be onboard Mercury Toona, and I shall be posting topics based on environmentalism.

Over the holidays I witnessed how wasteful we can be. One receives a boxed gift also wrapped in paper, only for it to be ripped open and thrown away. I began to wonder how this adds up across America.

I found this article, which shows roughly how much waste is produced and a few tips on reducing the waste.

Don't waste rubbish, urges recycle drive

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Last Updated: 12:25AM GMT 24 Dec 2006

Recycling

Each person will throw away an average of 110lbs of rubbish this Christmas - the equivalent of nine average-sized turkeys or more than 60 leaves of bread, according to official figures.

Christmas will result in around three million tons of waste, which is enough to fill 400,000 double-decker buses, and equates to around a tenth of all domestic waste generated in a year, according to Recycle Now, a government-backed recycling campaign.

Although nine out of 10 households in England now have access to a curbside recycling scheme, a study by the government-funded Waste Resources Action Program has shown that 41 per cent of the population admit to lapsing on recycling over Christmas and consigning everything to the bin instead.

This will result in extra demand for holes in the ground to dump the waste in, and extra emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas generated by landfill sites.

The potential for extra waste is considerable given the shopping list for an average Christmas. This includes, in an average year in England, 15,000 tons of Brussels sprouts, equivalent in weight to 37 jumbo jets and 175 million mince pies, nearly 600 times the height of Everest.

Recycle Now has been trying to encourage people to shop in a way that generates as little waste as possible and to plan meals to use what is left over.

It says that more than half the waste generated at Christmas could be recycled into other products.

Recycle Now is advocating "drop when you shop" or taking waste back to supermarket drop-off points when you return for more.

It is promoting the Christmas card recycling scheme which benefits the Woodland Trust and has drop-off bins at Tescos, TK Maxx and WH Smith.

And it advises opening presents carefully so that the wrapping paper can be recycled for another year.

Gareth Lloyd from Recycle Now said: "The good news is that nine out of 10 homes now have a doorstep recycling service for a range of materials including paper, card, glass and metal cans.

"This has an impact. Current recycling in Britain saves greenhouse gases equivalent to taking 3.5 million cars off the road."

In addition, I would like to add a couple more ideas to help one reduce and reuse.

- As stated, carefully opening the wrapping paper instead of tearing it open will allow more uses from it; however, using newspaper works fine as wrapping paper, and it is more widely accepted at recycling centers.

- Using gift bags instead of wrapping paper. Again, they can be reused multiple times.