How To Recycle Your Christmas

Danny Seo, author of the Simply Green book series, presents simple, resourceful and easy ways to pack up all the holiday decorations, recycle unwanted gift wrap and bows, recycle holiday string lights, reuse delicious holiday candles and much more using everyday items you can repurpose and reuse. He offered the following tips:

• GREEN TIP #1: Recycle a dryer cleaner bag into a wreath storage solution
Many people have artificial wreaths and need to store them after the holiday season. Since an artificial wreath can get dusty very quickly and can be hard to clean, it’s important to cover them with plastic to keep them protected.

Recycle a dry cleaning plastic bag and hanger into a quick and easy storage solution: hang the wreath on the hanger, wrap in the existing plastic, tie a knot and hang on the back of a door or in a hallway closet.

• GREEN TIP #2: Save holiday candles or recycle them away into scented sachets for your closet.
Holiday candles can look out of place after Christmas, especially if they are emblazoned with scenes of Rudolph and Christmas trees. To save them for next year, use a ripped nylon hosiery to protect them and pack them in a box with tissue paper.

If you enjoy the scent of a holiday candle, but not the look, you can also chip them up with a hammer and fill a tea strainer ball with the fragrant wax. Leave the strainer balls in your dresser drawers or hang it in the closet as an instant room fragrance freshener.

• GREEN TIP #3: Store your lights using Recycled Materials or Make a New Year’s Ball
If you invested in those energy efficient LED string lights, why not recycle your Christmas lights into a mini Time Square lit-up ball? Just plug the LED string lights together and wrap them into a tight ball and hang from the ceiling. Because LED lights do not get hot, they are safe to wrap onto themselves over and over; plus, since LED lights do not have glass bulbs, they will not shatter if tightly wrapped, too.

If you want to store your holiday lights, recycle an empty coffee can into a storage solution by wrapping the lights on the outside of the coffee can. Plus extension cords inside the can so they are all handy and accessible for next year.

• GREEN TIP #4: How to Recycle Bows and Gift Wrapping Paper.
Holiday bows are one of the easiest gift wrapping materials to recycle. Just remove the box and add a piece of removable poster tape to the bottom of the bow. The next time you’re wrapping a gift, just remove the waxy strip and you’ve got a brand new bow ready to go.
Gift wrap can be difficult to both recycle and reuse.

One program to look for is from PaperRetriever, a program that not only recycles old waste paper---magazines, office paper, newspaper and gift wrap---but gives the schools that collects this waste paper money for each pound of paper collected. All the paper that’s collected in the bins is sent directly to waste paper mills, where it’s pulped and made into newsprint for the newspaper industry. The more paper you recycle, the more money you’re helping to raise.

• GREEN TIP #5: Store your Ornaments Safely in Recycled Cups
Save paper coffee cups---from friends, co-workers, your own when you forget your reusable thermos---and rinse them out to use as protective ornament holders.

Place fragile ornaments inside and cap with the plastic lid; wrap the cardboard sleeve around larger, less-delicate ornaments as a protective sleeve, too. You can also recycle cardboard and polystyrene egg cartons into ornament holders; place smaller ornaments in each compartment, close and secure tight with a rubber band.