As we celebrate, decorate, give gifts and travel this holiday season, we also generate a lot of waste and increase our energy use. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the volume of household waste in this country increases 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day; that amounts to around one million extra tons of garbage!

Here are some tips to reuse your waste this holiday season:

• Reuse or recycle greeting cards, gift wrap, and gift bags.
• Choose the sustainable shipping and packaging option when ordering from Amazon!
• If your electronics get updated this holiday season, old electronics can be recycled at Staples.
• Give an experience as a gift (concerts, classes, etc).
• Wrap presents with recyclable paper (not shiny) or paper around the house (posters, newspaper). Ribbons and bows should be saved to reuse.
• Donate old toys at Goodwill or other local thrift stores.
• Take a reusable bag along for your holiday gift and meal shopping.
• Recyclables can be taken to one of the 40 recycling drop-off locations found at www.oeq.net/recycle.aspx.
• If you need to purchase additional lights, use Energy Star energy efficient lighting. The EPA estimates that these lights use 1/50th of the electricity of conventional lights and last up to 30 years!
• Recycle old lights at one of many locations found here.
• Put lights on a timer or turn them on only when someone is home to conserve power.
• Recycle your Christmas Tree at one of many locations found here.

For more resources, visit www.acswd.org