Gift giving during the holidays can be challenging, and trying to keep the trash bin from overflowing between garbage pickup days becomes difficult.

Recycling and reducing waste during the holidays can become a goal for the entire family, even a contest, with an environmental prize for the winner.

Let’s start with how we can reduce our impact on the environment when giving gifts and end the story with what can be recycled after the holidays. Giving a gift to someone doesn’t necessarily mean purchasing something physical. There are many people in need of lawn mowing and snow shoveling, house cleaning services, a hot air balloon ride, painting, ride to the doctor or the grocery store (groceries), train ride, magazine subscription, cable TV subscription, or lawn and house ornaments made from scrap lumber.

Using a scarf, handkerchief or bandanna, old posters or a road map to wrap gifts are good re-use ideas. If you stuff the boxed gift with popcorn, everyone can enjoy eating it later or even feeding it to the birds at a season when their food supply is low.

Use a necktie gift as the bow for a package or re-use old greeting cards by cutting them up and paste together to create a new one. Use scrap fabric, scarves, beads, buttons or jewelry bought at rummage sales to decorate gifts.

Do you have the recycling instruction sheet in your home? We work very hard to encourage people to read them because so many recyclable items go into the trash instead of the recycling bin.

Our motto is: &uot;If it’s paper, it’s probably recyclable.&uot;

The exceptions are frozen food boxes like butter, pizzas and bacon packages. You can recycle magazines, junk mail and even old books with the covers left on them.

So, what kinds of paper will we accumulate this holiday that can be recycled? Gift wrap paper should be folded and placed into a paper sack for recycling.

Don’t worry about the tape or the name card, recycling all of it. Do not leave the ribbons with the paper, but save them for re-wrapping another gift. All of those boxes, large and small, can be recycled. Flatten and put all of them together into a larger box or a paper sack.

Junk mail is on the increase during the holidays, too. If it’s of newspaper quality, place it with the newspaper recycling bundle. If the junk mail is letter quality or the shiny magazine paper, place it with the junk mail in a paper sack. Be sure to staple, tape or tie the sack shut when you place it on the curb for pickup so it will not blow around the neighborhood if the wind changes.

The junk mail sack is the &uot;catch all&uot; bag for all those paper products that don’t fit into the magazine stack, newspaper stack or the cardboard bundle.

I’ll say it again! &uot;If it’s paper, it’s probably recyclable.&uot; Thirty percent of the garbage going to our landfill is still paper products of recycling quality.

Many of us still receive holiday greeting cards in the mail. The cards and the envelope they came in are all recyclable. They should be placed into the junk mail sack.

As your junk mail sack fills, try to place wrapping paper on one half and the greeting cards on the other half.

The same holds true for other paper you put in this sack. Try to keep the &uot;like&uot; things together as you fill the sack.

Have a great holiday and remember that the tiny part we each play in recycling and reducing waste is a huge difference when the garbage trucks are measured and weigh in at the landfill gate.

(Randy Tuchtenhagen

is the Freeborn County Solid Waste Officer.)