With the holidays approaching, this professor wants people to be mindful of their consumption

The holiday season is known for being positive and heartwarming for many. It's a time to celebrate with family and friends, and to give them presents. It also comes a lot of excesses, including an abundance of plastic, whether it's toys, wrapping paper, and plastic gift bags.

Dr. Tony Walker, assistant professor for Dalhousie's School for Resource and Environmental Studies, would like to remind people of the importance of reducing waste and keeping sustainability in mind when getting items ready to put under the tree. He suggests buying fewer presents from the store and using environmentally friendly gift wrap.

"Something that might be homemade, something which is a bit more original. And that could be gifted in a brown paper bag, or better still, use last year's gift bag that you got for something," says Walker. "Assuming it's not tampered with or got a name on it, you could easily reuse that many, many times."

"Avoid the crinkly, shiny plastic wrapping paper that you have to use a bunch of tape on, none of that can be recycled."

Canada as a whole recycles plastic fairly consistently. According to Walker, the rate of plastic recycling is about nine to eleven per cent, which reflects the vast quantity of plastics that currently have no way to be recycled.

Some types of plastics lose their integrity after repeated use, and some are different compounds that can't be mixed together.

"At the moment, we're just surrounded by so many different complex types of monomers and polymers, essentially just different plastics, and you know there's no end of life for them, and if there is they have incredibly low value."

So this holiday season it is imperative that people choose to celebrate sustainably.

With so much weight put on the concept of recycling, it is possible to forget the first two of the 3 Rs, reduce and reuse.

Because current recycling technology has not yet caught up with the immeasurable amount of plastic in our day-to-day lives, reducing and reusing are the biggest ways to have a positive environmental impact this season.

A list of what can be recycled in Halifax Regional Municipality can be found onlne.