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News Release No. 482
DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES URGES
WASTE REDUCTION FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Volume 33-482 |
Contact: Renee Bungart |
(For immediate release) |
573-751-4465 |
JEFFERSON CITY, MO, NOV. 23, 2005 –As the holiday season begins, excitement is growing in the chilly Missouri air. With attention paid to family, friends, gifts, food and travel, it’s easy to forget about the waste we produce. Careful planning during the purchase of holiday gifts can reduce the amount of related waste that would otherwise end up in the state’s landfills, according to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
On average, Americans produce 1 million extra tons of waste per week between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. That’s about the weight of five unfueled space shuttles! By following a few easy suggestions that focus on waste reduction, product reuse and recycling, consumers can be generous to both friends and family, and the environment.
To have an environmentally friendly holiday season, Missourians can:
- Buy gifts and products that are made of recycled materials.
- Buy toys that don’t use batteries or buy rechargeable batteries to go with new electronic toys. Information on disposing of batteries is available on www.rbrc.org. Collection sites are often available at Wal-Mart, Radio Shack, Target, Sears, Black and Decker, Best Buy, Circuit City and Home Depot. Save gasoline, call before you make the trip.
- Consider purchasing durable, long-lasting gifts as well as avoiding unnecessary packaging to reduce the amount of waste ending up in landfills.
- Buy living gifts. House plants, garden seeds or potted trees that can be transplanted in the spring.
- Give gifts grown, raised, made and marketed by your neighbors. Locally made gifts usually have less packaging and involve much less shipping. The Missouri Department of Agriculture lists Missouri products and where to find them on the Web at www.agrimissouri.com.
- Give gifts friendly to the environment. For example, cloth napkins and tablecloths, cloth shopping bags, a recycled plastic compost bin, gift certificates to resale shops or an equipment rental store, lamps designed for compact fluorescent bulbs, lunch boxes, recycling bins or stationary made from recycled paper.
- Reduce waste by offering homemade food items or personal services as gifts, such as washing the family car, sweeping sidewalks, shoveling snow, or painting for elderly family members or neighbors.
- Reuse holiday wrapping, or use old maps or comic pages from the Sunday paper for wrapping gifts. Put gifts in decorative tins or boxes instead of throwaway wrapping materials. Use and reuse decorative gift bags.
- Consider sending season’s greeting cards in E-mail form. It saves paper and you can add numerous pictures plus sound and animation.
- Use your imagination in trimming the tree or yard for the holidays. Recondition those strings of lights. Crafts with cardboard, Popsicle sticks, old calendar photos and old holiday cards make fun activities for kids and adults alike.
- Recycle the Christmas tree. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has a fact sheet available on proper disposal of Christmas trees on the Web site at www.dnr.mo.gov/oac/pub184.pdf. To compensate for the harvest of your Christmas tree, arrange to plant a new tree next spring. Or, consider using a durable artificial tree. Try reusing old artificial trees in outdoor holiday displays or for feeding birds and wildlife.
With just a little planning and creativity, you can help alleviate that year-end bulge in our landfills. For more information on recycling, reuse and composting, contact the department’s Solid Waste Management Program at 800-361-4827 or 573-751-5401 or by e-mail to swmp@dnr.mo.gov or you visit our Web site at www.dnr.mo.gov/env/swmp. Have a fun, safe and “green” holiday season!
For news releases on the Web, visit www.dnr.mo.gov/newsrel. For a complete listing of the department's upcoming events, meetings and hearings, visit the department's online calendar at www.dnr.mo.gov/calendar/search.do.
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