Green Groups Urge Trimming the Holiday "Wasteline"

Hillary Mayell
for National Geographic News

December 26, 2001

With the holiday season in full swing, conservation groups on both sides
of the Atlantic are increasing the decibel level as they chant their
mantra: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

And with good cause. In the United Kingdom, the "Do Your Bit" campaign estimates that holiday merrymaking is likely to create more than 3 million tons of festive rubbish. In the United States, the numbers are equally staggering. Americans will throw away an additional 25 million tons of garbage—about 1 million extra tons a week, estimates Use Less Stuff, a U.S.-based environmental group.

What's in the trash? The Do Your Bit campaign, sponsored by the U.K. Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), estimates that British rubbish bins at the end of the festive season could contain as much as 1 billion Christmas cards (17 for every man, woman, and child); 6 million Christmas trees; 4,200 tons of aluminum foil; and 125,000 tons of plastic packaging. The mountains of trash will also include 32 square miles (83 square kilometers) of wrapping paper, enough to bury St. Thomas, one of the Virgin Islands.

The extra 25 million tons of trash discarded by Americans is similar in composition; just multiply by eight.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Environmental groups in both countries offer plenty of suggestions for how we can all do our bit and trim our holiday "wastelines."

There are the standard recommendations; reduce the number of automobile trips you take to shop, wrap your gifts in comic papers, use your local community programs to recycle cans, bottles, paper, and glass. Carefully unwrap presents so the paper can be reused next Christmas. Save your ribbons and bows.

And then there are the not so obvious. Use Less Stuff has a 42-item "Trim your Holiday Wasteline" list. The recommendations range from reducing the heat before your guests arrive for a holiday party—all those extra bodies will heat the room on their own—to bringing your own shopping bags on Christmas buying sprees, and shopping at antique stores or fleamarkets, a fun way to acquire recycled goods.

In the gift giving category, instead of giving a plastic toy that will still be contributing PCBs to the environment when your great-great-great-great grandchildren are around, consider gift certificates, donations to charity—preferably environmental—or, for your kids, stocks and savings bonds.

For the creative, the possibilities are endless. Take your empty wine bottles and transform them into colorful candleholders or vases, transform discarded floppy disks into tree ornaments, put this year's Christmas cards away to cut up and use as gift tags for next year's gifts or use them to make tree ornaments. There are lots of how-to's online.

Sending electronic Christmas cards this year was a big favorite in the suggestion arena. The 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the United States could fill a football field 10 stories high or circle the planet 10 times. Another 1 billion Christmas cards are purchased in the United Kingdom.

Recycling the Christmas Tree

But let's say you'll keep those suggestions in mind for next year, but for this Christmas, the gifts are bought, the wrapping trashed, and your artistic talent is nil. There's still the Christmas tree.

In the U.S., more than 33 million trees are sold each year. Real Christmas trees are the ultimate green renewable product; nearly 98 percent are grown on farms as a crop just like corn, wheat or pumpkins, and like any other crop, harvested trees are replaced by new plantings. Most communities have tree recycling programs to make disposal easy, but even in the worst case scenario—a tree isn't recycled—it's still fully biodegradable.

Where do recycled Christmas trees go? The variety of uses for recycled trees is astonishing. Community recycling programs chip the trees into mulch for use on gardens, parks, hiking trails, playground areas, animal stalls and landscaping. Whole trees are used in river shoreline stabilization projects, for beach erosion prevention, marshland sedimentation, fish habitats, winter garden decorations, wild bird feeders, and even hazardous chemical clean-ups.

Louisiana is an example of Christmas tree wetlands conservation at its best. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Louisiana loses about 25 to 35 square miles (66 to 90 square kilometers) of coastal wetlands a year to erosion. Since 1989, close to 1.5 million recycled Christmas trees have been used to stem the tide.

Under the state's Christmas Tree Program, wooden pens built across shallow open water are filled with recycled trees. The Christmas tree barriers act as wave-breakers, helping to reduce marsh-edge erosion, enhance water clarity, and provide important reef areas for many fish and crustacean species.

So in addition to the Christmas carols, listen to the conservation mantra this year: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.