Use Less Stuff This Holiday Season

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Each November and December, residents of Southeast Wisconsin throw away an extra 5,000 tons of holiday trash*. This gigantic pile of old catalogues,wrapping paper, gift boxes, leftover food, old Christmas cards and other debris would fill a fleet of 100 garbage trucks!

You can save money and natural resources by REDUCING waste: not creating it in the first place! Another good choice is REUSE: turning former trash into something useful; for example, making gift wrapping scraps into art supplies for the kids.

Following are some tips for holiday waste reduction from the Be SMART: Save Money and Reduce Trash campaign. For more information, call the Be SMART hotline, 1-866-91-SMART.

• Put together a box of old, out of style dresses, jewelry and high heels andgive it to your niece as a Christmas present to play dress up.
• Hold a White Elephant Party after the holidays. Ask friends to bring holiday gifts they don't want. Put them on a table and let others choose an item that they like. You'll be amazed at what happens!
• Call the 1 800 numbers from catalogues that you don't want and ask to be removed from their mailing lists.
• Plan food portions carefully. If every American throws away just one bite of turkey with gravy, eight million pounds of food is wasted. One uneaten tablespoon of mashed potatoes per person adds 16 million pounds of waste!**
• Cut out creative illustrations from old Christmas cards and hang them on next year's tree.
• Wrap gifts in Sunday comics, old maps or kids' artwork. Or, wrap them in reusable gift items such as towels or sheets.
• Save gift boxes, intact wrapping paper and bows for next year.
• Bring your own shopping bags when you go shopping for holiday items. Paper, plastic and cloth are all fine. In New York City alone, one less grocery bag per person per year would save five million pounds of waste and $250,000 in disposal costs**.
• Buy a Christmas tree that can be planted, mulched, or chipped. Or, buy an artificial one.
• Give the gift of your time: for example, a coupon to your wife good for one romantic evening, or a coupon to your father in law that says you'll take him on a fishing trip.
• Use washable dinnerware at holiday parties instead of paper plates and plastic foam cups.

• City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works, extrapolated to population of Southeast Wisconsin.
• Use Less Stuff Report, Ann Arbor, Michigan.