Seasonal Products

Easter

Easter is celebrated by many in Western cultures, whether religiously or secularly, as a joyous spring holiday spent with family and friends. The United Kingdom estimates that such festivities bring an extra 8,000 tons of waste from the 10 million cards sent and egg cartons used to create Easter eggs.

While Easter is the second-biggest chocolate-consuming holiday (after Christmas), producers such as Cadbury UK and Nestlé UK are making efforts to reduce packaging waste by more than 25 percent, thereby reducing landfill waste by 200–700 tons per year, respectively. Ecoconscious celebrants recommend sending e-cards over paper cards. Also, dyed eggs should be consumed, not just disposed of, and eggshells composted. When purchasing eggs, celebrants should opt for recyclable cardboard egg crates, rather than landfill-bound Styrofoam.

Halloween

Halloween is an increasingly popular holiday in the United States, with over 60 percent of Americans celebrating annually. Across the United States, [Page 791]consumption of disposable products increases as temporary (pop-up) Halloween stores such as Spirit Halloween Stores and Halloween Express offer seasonal products. The National Retail Federation reports that Halloween purchases in 2009 exceeded $4 billion, which is down from previous years. Halloween sales tend to include many products purchased for a single use and then discarded. Items range from single-use costume makeup and colored hairsprays to disposable party ware. Estimates suggest that 13,000 tons of Halloween costumes are sent to landfills each year.

Costume swaps, where children swap old costumes for different costumes, could reduce the holiday impact on landfills substantially. Ecoconscious party revelers also recommend using natural, festive adornments such as old clothes for stuffed scarecrows and repainted paper lanterns over nonrecyclable plastic pumpkins and plastic bags. Further, rather than discarding pumpkins, make use of the inside (pumpkin seeds and pulp for pies) and compost the outer shells.

Winter Holidays

According to the Clean Air Council, one-third of the waste generated in the United States is packaging, with an additional 5 million tons of waste generated during the holidays. An extra 1 million tons of waste is generated each week between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.

Four million tons of the additional generated waste is wrapping paper and shopping bags. In addition, consumers send and dispose of an estimated 2.6 billion holiday cards and 38,000 miles of ribbon each year. Estimates suggest that for every pound of wrapping paper, there is an additional five pounds of cardboard and other packaging, whether from product packaging itself (cardboard and bubble wrap) or from shipping protection (additional cardboard, plastic wrap, and crating).

Further, approximately 40 percent of all battery sales occur during the winter holiday season. When improperly disposed of, the metals and chemicals in batteries, such as lead and mercury, can leach into the ground, affecting soil and groundwater. Fortunately, battery recycling is gaining momentum. North America's only free battery and cell phone collection program, Call2Recycle, collected 6.7 million pounds of rechargeable batteries in 2010. This represented a 10.1 percent increase in the United States and an 81 percent increase in Canada from their 2009 collection rates.

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