The holidays are basically over and now everyone is beginning to take down their decorations and dispose of holiday trash. The holiday season cause a huge increase in consumer waste so we all need to try and do our part to decrease the impact on the environment. This year there were a lot of good articles with tips for holiday recycling. I thought this one was particularly useful:

http://www.star-telegram.com/home/story/391757.html

There was also a big push this year to switch to LED Christmas lights. The push to switch to a new technology caused many to wonder what should be done with their old incandescent Christmas lights. HolidayLEDs.com is offer to recycle old incandescent Christmas lights until January 31, 2008.

The holiday season is typically a time where many of through out the rule book for a few days.  We eat too much, we drink too much, and we buy too much.  All of this holiday excess creates a great deal of additional waste during the holiday season.  In fact, Americans create an additional 1 million tons of garbage each week during the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We also use a lot of extra energy.

This holiday season don’t forget all the rules and try to pay attention to the waste you are creating and make an effort to reduce it.  This year at my house wrapping paper won’t be allowed except for my 3 year old daughter (and her wrapping paper will be newspaper or something like that.)  We’ll also be buying a Christmas tree that is in a pot so we can plant it in the yard in the spring.  And we’ll be recycling our old incandescent Christmas lights (the copper is actually worth something) and replacing them with energy-efficient Christmas lights that use LEDs.

LED Xmas lights use about 85% less energy than standard incandescent lights and will last for more than 50,000 hours.  Even Clark Griswold can save money and energy with these lights.