Saturday, December 31, 2011

Recycling and Packing Up Christmas

Today I am having a marathon session of packing up all our decorations so they will be Vancouver Island move ready. This involves slightly more time than a normal packup as everything must be tagged, and rubbermaid containers (purchased in our last move 4 years ago) carefully packed to 100% capacity.

I still am on the "purchase no more Christmas crap campaign" so when we opened our presents this year I carefully gathered all the wrappings, bows and ribbons in a garbage bag to be sorted out today - if you decide to do this understand this is best done well after Christmas when there is no stress involved. Yes, a few items get crunched but you can still save a lot of wrappings to be reused.

For our recycling bins: plastic was carefully separated as was non-foil paper - 90% of the garbage bag full of discarded material is recycled this way.

For the garbage: foil Christmas wrap which still makes it way into our house but as a result of finding we cannot recycle these I would not suggest any buy foil wrapping papers if possible. There are greener options.

For us to reuse: All of the below, some of which were recycled from last year. The blue gift bag was purchased at the dollar store about five years ago and has made it through the last five Christmases still in great shape. The tags I made out of Christmas cards - the ones I made last year were mostly used up this year.




To Take to the Salvation Army or Goodwill: Two baskets (I would have kept these if we weren't moving but baskets are extremely cheap at thrift stores to rebuy)




Not only is this a way to save money every Christmas on not having to purchase items to decorate presents with - you are helping put less waste into landfills.

I bought one thing this Christmas: package of 50 Christmas paper napkins as I entertained family on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. These were $2.99 and will be recycled in my green bin. Yes, the same as last year, my only deviance from the "buy no more Christmas crap campaign".

Do you recycle anything from Christmas wrappings?

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