TIS THE SEASON TO RECYCLE

Did you know that Americans throw away 25% more trash during the Thanksgiving to New Year’s holiday period than any other time of the year? This extra waste amounts to about 25 million tons of garbage. What can you do to help reduce this holiday waste? Of course the first thing we recommend is to make that extra effort to recycle more of your stuff during the holidays.

Packaging is the largest component of this increased trash and our local recycling programs offer recycling for all of your paper packaging - shipping boxes and gift boxes as well as wrapping paper. The second largest source of this increased trash comes from all the holiday meals and various celebrations that happen from late November through New Year’s. Once again, our community is fortunate to have recycling programs that will take most of the trash generated here – aluminum cans, aluminum foil, aluminum baking dishes, steel food cans, glass bottles and jars and the #1 and #2 plastic bottles and containers (please rinse). And then there are all those Christmas trees that looked great for a while and then get thrown out. We also have good recycling programs for those trees.

Before discussing the details on how to recycle all the items mentioned above, let’s look at another important way to reduce this volume of holiday trash. REDUCE, REDUCE and REDUCE. With some creative effort, there are ample opportunities to reduce the amount of stuff generated in the first place. We recommend that you check out the following two websites. Both sites offer excellent and interesting ways to help reduce your amount of “stuff” as well as your energy consumption during the holidays. www.use-less-stuff.com and www.greengiftguide.com .

Here are some schedules that will help you recycle the most you can this holiday season:

Curbside - will pick up your boxes (corrugated and paperboard) at the curb on the Friday after Christmas for Thursday and Friday’s normal customers and again on Monday and Tuesday. They will also pick up your “real” Christmas trees the week after Christmas. (236-4580) Floyd County Remote Sites – always take boxes during their normal hours of operation and will accept your “real” Christmas trees for 2 weeks after Christmas. (236-2495).

The Recycling Center will accept your boxes all day every day, along with your wrapping paper and other recyclables, however, the Recycling Center will not be taking Christmas trees at any time. (291-5266).

Keep Rome/Floyd Beautiful - will accept Christmas trees for chipping on Saturday, January 3^rd, 2004 at the Home Depot parking lot and the City’s mulch site off Vaughn Road. (236-4456)

The Recycling Center will be closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and will reopen on Friday, December 26 and be open on Saturday, Dec 27^th from 8 – 2. We will be placing bales out front to extend the drop off area for all the extra recyclables that come in during this time. If you will please, please, please put all of your recyclables into bags (or boxes) it will not only take up less space, it will also allow us to bring the stuff inside the building much faster when we get back to work. Loose material takes 2 to 3 times longer to pick up and sort properly. Happy Holidays and Thanks for Recycling.