Facts on Holiday Waste (from www.recycleworks.org)
From Thanksgiving to New Years Day, household waste increases by more than 25%. Added food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons – it all adds up to an additional 1 million tons a week to our landfills. (EPA and Use Less Stuff)
In the U.S., annual trash from gift-wrap and shopping bags totals 4 million tons. (Use Less Stuff, 1998)
- Cards
- 1.9 billion Christmas cards are sent to friends and loved ones every year, making Christmas the largest card-sending occasion in the United States. (Hallmark research)
- The amount of cards sold during the holiday season would fill a football field 10 stories high, and requires the harvesting of nearly 300,000 trees. (Use Less Stuff)
- Ribbons
- 38,000 miles of ribbon is thrown out each year. The Earth’s circumference is 25,000 miles – enough to tie a bow around the Earth.
- Food
- At least 28 billion pounds of edible food are wasted each year – or over 100 pounds per person. Putting one less cookie on Santa’s plate will reduce his snacking by about 2 million pounds. (Use Less Stuff, 1998)
- If every American throws away just one uneaten tablespoon of mashed potatoes it adds 16 million pounds of waste to our landfills. (Cygnus Group)
- Paper
- Half of the paper America consumes is used to wrap and decorate consumer products. (The Recycler’s Handbook, 1990)
- Christmas Trees
- Each year, 50 million Christmas trees are purchased in the U.S. (Cygnus Group). Of those, about 30 million go to the landfill. (Environmental News Network)
- Gifts
- The average American spends $800 on gifts over the holiday season.
- According to a national survey, 70% of Americans would welcome less emphasis on gift giving and spending. (Center for a New American Dream)
- About 40% of all battery sales occur during the holiday season. (EPA)
- Transportation
- If each family reduced holiday gasoline consumption by one gallon (about twenty miles), we’d reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one million tons. (Use Less Stuff, 1998)
