Name: Garbage increases during holidays: How you can reduce your impact
Uploaded: 2025-12-24T09:04:51.150Z
Duration: 3 min 8 s
Description: Garbage increases during the holidays. Here’s how you can reduce your impact.

Garbage increases during the holidays. Here’s how you can reduce your impact.

Denver

Recycle Utah in Park City experiences a sharp rise in recycling activity during the holiday season, with daily visits increasing from around 400 to as many as 800 cars. The majority of the post-holiday recycling consists of packaging materials, prompting staff and community members to encourage waste reduction and responsible recycling.

Education efforts focus on choosing non-material gifts, reusing wrapping supplies, and purchasing items made from recycled materials. Residents are also advised to check local recycling rules and utilize online resources for disposing of hard-to-recycle items such as batteries and electronics.

Garbage increases during holidays: How you can reduce your impact

People won't take the time sometimes to go to recycling center, and so I'm real happy to just load up my truck and bring it here. Recycling is so important to Bernadette Bohannon that when she comes to Recycle Utah in Park City, she brings not only all of her trash, but all of her neighbors as well. I just kind of tell them, drop your recycling off. And I kind of made a little flyer, told them, you know what, it was recyclable. On an average day here, staff estimate Bohannon's car is one of about 400 that drives up to recycle everything from glass to cardboard and hard-to-recycle items like styrofoam. It's beautiful here. Don't you want to keep everything out of landfill? Eyeglasses, bras, flags. Hey, how are you? During the holidays, the non-profit sees even more demand for its services. Some of it's full, some of it might be missing a few, but whatever. With more like 600 to 800 cars coming through each day. We receive probably at least twice as much, if not three times as much recycling in the week after Christmas, and most of that is packaging. Chelsea Hafer is Recycle Utah's education director. We do what we can. I personally hardly throw anything away. She encourages those still doing last-minute holiday shopping to reduce their waste before it ends up in a recycling center or a landfill. People should think about buying gifts that aren't material. So buying gift cards to restaurants, buying a massage gift card, things like that, because I think people enjoy those just as much, but it just doesn't create the waste. She also suggests buying products made from recycled materials, hand-making gifts from things you already have, or purchasing higher-quality items that won't wear out as quickly. When you're thinking about all of the things that you're getting for other people, you definitely can think about how that will impact the earth. When it's time to wrap, reach for recyclable paper or other reusable materials. Keep gift bags year after year. I think you can reuse tissue paper year after year, ribbons, things like that that aren't as recyclable. There's so much wrapping paper going in. Bohannon expects she'll be back at Recycle Utah in a few weeks with her neighborhood's post-holiday haul. You know, we're kind of a consumer culture, right? So there's a lot of Amazon boxes. She encourages other people to do their part and take a little extra time to give their trash a chance at a new life in the new year. It kind of makes up for the fact that we're consuming all this stuff. I know that sounds terrible. Every municipality has its own rules, so check with your local government to find out what they can and can't recycle. But in general, try to remember the super six. That's cardboard, plastic containers, steel, aluminum, food containers, and paper. And for harder to recycle items like batteries and electronics, you can search the Department of Environmental Quality's recycling map online. Taylor Stevens, FOX 13 News, Utah.

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