Remember To Recycle This Holiday Season - Editorial
With the holiday season ramping up, it is important to remember what materials can and cannot be recycled or trashed once the gifts are unwrapped and the fun has been had.
We have written before about the robust textile recycling program in town, which seems to still be booming. Bourne is lucky to have a good system in place, with residential drop boxes for textiles located at each of the schools and at the Integrated Solid Waste Management Facility.
Another important recycling tip, though, is not as widely known. Expanded polystyrene foam, commonly called Styrofoam, is not recyclable through the single-stream process. In the fall, recycling committee chairwoman Heather DiPaola clued us in to the problem of improperly disposed Styrofoam. Not only do these materials need to be trashed, but they also need to be bagged first.
Styrofoam is a common packing material; you are almost guaranteed to handle it at least once this holiday season. Expanded polystyrene packing peanuts in particular are a good example—they are great for keeping our deliveries safe, but remembering to remove and bag the packing peanuts before breaking down cardboard boxes for recycling is a crucial step. If not, unbagged packing peanuts can become a problem; they go from being loose in the recycling cart to flying out all over the roads when picked up by the trucks, adding litter to our streets and sidewalks. And we know no one wants that!
Styrofoam, though helpful in its own right, can quickly contaminate recyclable materials when not properly disposed of. Leaving Styrofoam packing cubes inside the box your new air fryer came in sure is easier than separating all the pieces but once crushed, Styrofoam left in boxes crumbles like a Nature Valley bar and contaminates the entire load. What starts as a good faith attempt at recycling holiday shopping waste can quickly become something that condemns the whole recycling cart to the landfill.
Another important but not well-known recycling tip? Traditional wrapping paper is not recyclable. It is too thin, often becoming pulp before ever making it to the recycling facility. For a more waste-reductive approach to gift wrapping this holiday season, consider opting for Kraft’s rolls of brown, heavy-duty paper. It is not as flashy as some of the colorful, holographic wrapping papers out there, but it goes a long way in reducing waste. Plus, it is perfect to write on!
Holiday gift buying today definitely looks different than the shopping our parents did. There always seems to be excessive packaging—a box within a box within yet another box, for example. But while we cannot control the excessive packaging that often comes with shipped goods, what we can control is how we dispose of those materials through the proper channels.
We encourage all residents to be environmentally minded this holiday season, and to think twice before recycling or trashing any leftover materials once the holiday season winds down. It is better to accidentally trash a recyclable item than to contaminate an entire cart’s worth of material because of an assumption. When in doubt, throw it out!