Careful planning cuts down post-holiday waste

Careful planning during the purchase of holiday gifts can reduce the amount of related waste that ends up in the state’s landfills, according to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The following suggestions focus on waste reduction, product reuse and recycling, and generosity toward friends and family and the environment.

• Buy gifts and products that are made of recycled materials. For example: clothing or other items made of recycled plastic bottles; or crafts and products made from scrap wood or reclaimed lumber.

• Buy toys that don’t use batteries or buy rechargeable batteries to go with new electronic toys. Information on disposing of batteries is available at www.rbrc.org, and some retailers have collection sites available.

• Consider buying fewer, but higher quality, durable goods to reduce waste. Low price doesn’t always mean the best bargain. A higher-priced item may last much longer and reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.

• Buy living gifts, such as house plants, garden seeds or potted trees that can be transplanted in the spring.

• Give gifts grown, raised, made and marketed by your neighbors. Locally made gifts usually have less packaging and involve much less shipping.

• Give gifts friendly to the environment. For example, cloth napkins and tablecloths, cloth shopping bags, a recycled plastic compost bin, gift certificates to resale shops or an equipment rental store, lamps designed for compact fluorescent bulbs, lunch boxes, recycling bins or stationery made from recycled paper.

• Reduce waste by offering homemade food items or personal services as gifts, such as washing the family car, sweeping sidewalks, shoveling snow, or painting for elderly family members or neighbors.

• Reuse holiday wrapping paper, or use old maps or comic pages for wrapping gifts. Put gifts in decorative tins or boxes instead of throwaway wrapping materials. Use and reuse decorative gift bags.

• Recycle those unwanted gifts you received last year to a needy person or family. Donate nearly new items as gifts or donations to community service organizations.

• Use your imagination in trimming the tree or yard for the holidays. Take time to recondition strings of lights that may only need a few bulbs. Create ornaments out of items that can be painted or decorated for a new look.

• Recycle the Christmas tree. To compensate for the harvest of your Christmas tree, arrange to plant a new tree next spring. Or, consider using a durable artificial tree. Try reusing old artificial trees in outdoor holiday displays or for feeding birds and wildlife.