News
Don’t just dream of a green Christmas…
This feature was added on 19th December
The festive season is upon us again, and although we can’t guarantee it will be a white Christmas in Hertfordshire, we can all easily help to make sure it’s a green one.
While the time-honoured traditions of eating, drinking and shopping over the holiday period may create a lot of festive cheer, it also creates a lot of waste. So this year why not be fashionably green by simply reducing, reusing and recycling your rubbish.
During the Christmas period, people in the UK will:
- post around 150 million cards and packets – and an estimated one billion Christmas cards could end up in bins across the UK
- throw away about 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper – enough to cover an area larger than Guernsey.
- use an extra 750 million bottles and glass containers and 500 million drinks cans – The energy saving from recycling one glass bottle will power a computer for 25 minutes.
- generate about 160,000 tonnes of food waste
- use nearly 3000 tonnes of aluminium foil for cooking
- throw away 125,000 tonnes of plastic packaging
- buy about 8 million Christmas trees, most of which will be thrown out in January
This year, the Hertfordshire WasteAware Partnership is again urging local people to separate and recycle as much of their seasonal waste as they can – which includes everything from greetings cards and wrapping paper, to glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles, tins and cans, and Christmas trees.
County Councillor Derrick Ashley, Chair of the Hertfordshire Waste Partnership said: "It's important for people to recycle all year round, but the sheer volume of extra waste at this time of year means that we all need to try a little harder to avoid sending anything to landfill unnecessarily. “
Three Rivers District Councillor Phil Brading, Vice-chair of the Hertfordshire Waste Partnership said “This year we'd really like people to think about the amount of waste they are producing and try to minimise it wherever possible. Try to avoid buying heavily packaged goods and reuse and recycle as much as you can.”
The Partnership is also asking people to think ahead and actually cut down on the amount of waste they create in the first place, with a range of simple but effective tips:
- Buy durable gifts rather than ones that break easily; avoid items that rely on disposable parts such as batteries and filters; or buy ‘long life’ gifts such as vouchers and membership subscriptions.
- Choose decorations that can be reused, or better still make your own from scrap material. When wrapping gifts buy recycled paper and make gift tags from last years Christmas cards – and get reusable gift bags.
- Avoid goods that involve too much packaging, including food items such as vegetables; reuse your shopping bags and don’t accept new ones that you don’t need.
- Avoid using disposable paper plates, cups and serviettes if you are planning a party.
- Compost vegetable peelings rather than throwing them away.
- Recycle Christmas cards at one of the county’s household waste recycling centres or support the Woodland Trust’s scheme by recycling your Christmas cards at WHSmith, TK Maxx, M&S stores and Tesco supermarket from 2nd – 31st January 2008.
Visit the national recycling campaign’s website at www.recyclenow.com for more detailed advice, suggestions and useful contacts for a green Christmas and new year.
The countywide WasteAware campaign is a working partnership between the district and borough councils, and the county council which seeks to promote the facilities and services available in the county to make it as easy as possible to recycle.