(Madison County, NY – Jan. 9, 2014) Recycle your tree, wrapping paper and Christmas cards.
According to the National Christmas Tree Association, there are approximately 25-30 million real Christmas trees sold in North America each year. Dispose of your tree by bringing it to the main landfill on Buyea Rd. compost site or one of Madison County’s transfer stations. If you live in the country, you can put your tree out for a wildlife nesting area – just make sure to remove all tinsel or other decorations. You can chip it to use as mulch around shrubs and flowerbeds. If you have a live tree, plant it in the yard or donate it to a local school or nursing home to plant on their grounds.
Reuse wrapping paper, bows, ribbons, tissue paper, etc. Also, save gift bags and boxes and reuse them throughout the year. Those you can’t reuse, recycle. Recycle greeting cards. Save cards and cut them up to use as gift tags next year. They also make a great resource for children’s art projects. Wrapping paper and cards can go in with your regular paper recycling, but not those with foil. Recycle the cardboard boxes and other cardboard items. Make sure to break down boxes.
Donate old toys, clothes or unwanted gifts. You can donate to the ReUse Store located at the main landfill site on Buyea Rd. or your local church thrift store. Take this time each year to donate to local charities any unwanted gifts along with last year’s toys, clothes, or electronics that are still in good shape.
You may have noticed that more and more online retailers were using small inflated plastic for packaging this year. This is easy to recycle. Simply deflate and put in with your thin plastic bags. If you did get packing peanuts, some mailing locations accept clean foam packaging peanuts of all sizes, shapes, and colors for reuse.
Styrofoam is still a problem. Unfortunately, we are not able to accept Styrofoam for recycling in Madison County. This must be put in with the regular trash.
Finally, remove your name from the mailing list of any catalog you no longer wish to receive. You will most likely have to contact the vendor directly. For general junk mail, there are many options available which you can find by searching for ‘remove my name from mailing lists’ on the Internet.
For more information, call the Madison County Recycling Hotline at 1-800-721-2208.