TOLEDO, Ohio — As the holiday season wraps up, households are left with piles of boxes, wrapping paper and decorations. But what do you do with all of this leftover stuff?
Recycling is the answer.
"Recycling is important this time of year," says Adam Cassi, the executive director of Keep Toledo/Lucas County Beautiful. "It's estimated that waste in your household will increase about 25-45% during the holidays, and we want as much of that to go into the recycling as possible. We want people to follow good recycling habits when they're at home."
Keep Toledo/Lucas County Beautiful partners with the city of Toledo and Metroparks Toledo, encouraging the community to reduce, reuse and recycle. While there have been efforts, Cassi says most people are doing it wrong.
"Decorations and trees and wrapping paper and all that stuff, some of it gets a little bit tricky," he said. "Things like wrapping paper and Christmas cards, if they've got foil on them, if they're shiny, if they have sparkles and glitter and all that, we don't want it in the recycling bin."
For all of the tricky items, like Styrofoam, fake trees, bubble wrap and more, there are a bunch of spots around Lucas County where you can go to properly recycle these items. The Keep Toledo/Lucas County Beautiful website has a list of drop-off locations for recycling.
"The important thing around the holidays is recycling those normal recyclable items, the paper, the plastic, the aluminum, glass, but there are a lot of things that are recyclable that you can't put in your curbside recycling. You just have to find the proper place to take them," said Cassi.