Holiday recycling - WBAY

Holiday recycling

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) - With holiday gatherings and parties happening throughout the month, what should you do with all of the ribbons, all of the tags, and all of the packages, boxes and bags left behind once the festive fun is over?

Action 2 News looked into what to toss and what to recycle.

There is significantly more trash going to landfills from the week after Thanksgiving until the second week of January.

If you’re having a party, there are a variety of websites and apps that help you calculate how much food you need per person so you don’t end up with too many leftovers or food waste. If you do have leftovers, put them in reusable containers.

Recycling can help cut down that waste, but sometimes, especially around the holidays, it can be tough to know what can be recycled.

Wrapping paper, with its thin fibers, can diminish the quality of paper recycling batches so an entire batch might be thrown out -- and especially if the paper has any kind of sparkles, glitter, or foil. It’s best to put it in the garbage, where its paper fibers will break down over time.

Though most wrapping paper, bows and ribbons are not recyclable, sometimes you can reuse them. That’s an option to reduce the amount of wrapping paper going to the landfill.

You can recycle the cardboard tubes inside the wrapping paper.

You can also recycle pretty much any cardboard box. You’re encouraged to remove any plastic film, such as the “windows” on a lot of toy packaging to show kids the toy inside. Simply recycling a box can make a big impact.

“You recycle a cardboard box, it goes back to a manufacturer who pulps it up and makes it into a new cardboard and it comes back as another box. So you’re continuing to circle that through the economy,” Michael Walter, business development manager for the Brown County Port & Resource Recovery, told us.

It’s also important to remember you should not throw away batteries with the trash. They can spark a fire. You should bring them to the Brown County Port & Resource Recovery, 2561 S. Broadway in Ashwaubenon, which will dispose of them properly. You can search for other agencies responsible for recycling in your county on this DNR website and more information about what can be recycled in Wisconsin here.

There is a mobile app called Better Bin that makes it easy to figure out what to recycle and what to toss.

”We worked with a company out of the central part of the state, in Wausau, and developed an app that lets you scan bar codes on pretty much any product and it will tell you whether or not it’s recyclable in our tri-county area in Brown, Winnebago and Outagamie counties,” Walter said.

The app also offers incentives. Each time you scan an item, you earn points that can be redeemed for gift cards to a variety of places.

Watch our interview about the app from Action 2 News at 4:30.

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