Make it a Great Christmas: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle this Holiday

Are you a "maker?" Someone who creates crafts from items that others would toss in the trash?

Sometimes, the best gifts are homemade. This holiday season, OC Waste & Recycling encourages residents to Reduce, reuse and recycle and give a gift to the environment.

"As we celebrate, decorate, give gifts and travel this holiday season, we also generate a lot of waste," they said in recent release. "The volume of household waste in the United States generally increases 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day – that’s about 1 million extra tons of household waste per year."

You can green your own holiday season this year. Think of reducing, reusing and recycling as your gift to our environment, for this season and future generations.

Here are ways to give:

• Put old items to good use, rather than sending them to the landfill in your trash. Items such as old maps, comics, posters, colorful fabric can be used as wrapping paper. You can even make boxes from old holiday cards. View a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtee_BoQH0

• Recycle those batteries. About 40 percent of all battery sales occur during the holiday season; don’t throw the old ones away! Take them to an OC Household Hazardous Waste Collection Center. More information here.

• For your greenest friends, consider giving a compost bin or even a vermi-composting bin. Worms make great friends for the younger set. And they are a gift to the environment.

• Give gifts that require little or no packaging. Give the gift of time—cooking, babysitting, gardening or tickets to an event.

• Re-gift – no joke! Make room for new gifts by taking used clothing, outdated but functioning devices and furniture to Goodwill Orange County or your favorite charity thrift shop. Find Goodwill drop-off locations here: http://www.ocgoodwill.org/about-us/goodwill-locations

• Be mindful of food waste. It is estimated that in the U.S. 30 to 40 percent of food winds up in the trash, much of it going to landfills. Be conscious of not overstocking and over-purchasing perishable items in particular.

For more information visit us at http://www.oclandfills.com/ or call 714 834-4000.