This holiday season of giving, receiving, feasting, and decorating can come with some additional baggage—trash baggage, that is! Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the amount of trash produced in the United States increases by an estimated 25%—that’s about one million extra tons of garbage each week. Annually, Americans discard an estimated:

38,000 miles of ribbon, or enough to wrap around the planet (with some left for a bow);

$11 billion worth of packing material;

And 15 million used Christmas trees.

When this holiday material is discarded it can be headed to landfills, where, far from making things merry and bright, it undergoes bacterial decomposition, which produces “landfill gas”: a mixture of predominantly greenhouse gases including methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor. The methane in particular makes landfill gas stand out—landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States. Methane, a greenhouse gas with an impact on climate change more than 25 times greater than that of carbon dioxide, is the second-most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted in the United States from human activity. Carbon dioxide, the other major ingredient in landfill gas, is the first.

This year, consider trying out a new way of celebrating the season to help reduce your holiday waste:

Give a gift that needs no packaging—an experience! Offer to take friends or family on a trip to a public land, or offer to pay the entrance fee for a national, state, or local park you know they would enjoy.

Each year, an estimated 2.6 billion holiday cards are sold in the US, or enough to fill a football field 10 stories high. Instead of a traditional card, consider an e-card or a telephone call to friends and family.

When shopping for holiday foods, decorations, and gifts, use reusable shopping bags. These can be stronger than traditional single-use bags, protecting your purchases and reducing the amount of paper and plastic distributed by vendors.

For an eye-catching gift tag, cut off the front of any holiday cards you received in the previous year. The card’s decorative front will spruce up your gift, and you can write the recipient’s name on the blank side.

Save on gift wrap by reusing intact pieces from the previous year, or by opting for a more durable material that you can use again and again, such as a cloth bag.

Once it’s time to pack up the decorations, set aside your Christmas tree for recycling. Many areas collect trees in the first few weeks after Christmas to be mulched and used for water conservation and weed control.



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