SAN ANTONIO — Now that Christmas present upwrapping is over we are left with lots of wrapping paper and boxes.
San Antonio’s Solid Waste Management Department has some advice to make the cleanup a little more sustainable.
“Most everybody is getting to where they order online,” said Marcus Lee with the City of San Antonio. “We want the cardboard. This is recyclable. Keep that for us but we do ask that you flatten it out.”
“What we do not want is packing peanuts, the bubble wrap, and the air packet materials and Styrofoam,” Lee continued. “This is not recyclable, this is trash, so please throw it away for us.”
Also not in the recycling program is foiled, glittery or embellish wrapping paper.
“We just want plain paper,” said Lee.
They ask that you reuse.
“When it comes to your tree we have a great program that we will mulch live Christmas trees for you for free,” said Lee.
All of the more than 350,000 San Antonio customers have a brown trash cart, a blue recycling cart and a green cart for organic material.
PREVIOUS: Tips For Making the Holidays More Sustainable
Lee has a trick to keep that green cart clean.
“Take a little bit of shredded paper and put that in the bottom,” said Lee.
And put the leftover holiday foods in the brown paper bag.
“Corn husk, most recipes have celery, carrots, everyone has an onion in their stuffing, and everyone makes a big green salad,” said Lee. “Fruit rinds from the apple pie and peels for the banana pudding.”
Top off with more shredded paper on top, roll the bag up and place in the green organics cart.
