A Guide to Upcycling Your New Year’s Eve Decorations
Check out our list of easy tips to make your New Year’s Eve more sustainable this year.
The holiday season is full of fun events and opportunities to celebrate the year with your friends and family. With all this celebration, however, comes with it a larger amount of waste thrown in landfills compared to the rest of the year. On average, Americans create 25% more waste during the holiday season from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve. This extra waste equates to almost 25 million tons of extra waste which can end up harming the local environment if not disposed of properly.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to really understand the difference you can make just by making sustainable decisions when it comes to your celebration. A great example of this can be seen just by looking at wrapping paper alone. If every American wrapped three of their gifts using recycled paper, on average there would be enough paper saved to cover 45,000 football fields.
Upcycling is a trend that has been growing over the years as more people choose to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Upcycling is defined by Mark Richardson, in his paper “Design for Reuse: Integrating Upcycling Into Industrial Design Practice” which focuses on this topic along with other key sustainability concerns.
“A way designers can directly reduce the net volume of household solid waste entering the waste stream; and more broadly, net material volumes in the global product market.”
There are endless possibilities when it comes to upcycling and the different items and products that can be created. Check out this list containing 30+ of the most popular items and materials you can upcycle today.
1) Turn Old Wrapping Paper Into New Year’s Eve Confetti:
2) Re-Use Your Christmas Decorations for Your New Year’s Party:
3) Double up on Your Invitations:
Most of the time you are celebrating Christmas with the same people you’d be inviting to your New Year’s Eve party. Why not double up on your invitations by inviting everyone to both using the same card! This is a great way to save money while also helping out your local environment. To put it into perspective, if every American sent one less card each year there would be enough paper saved to fill a football field ten stories high, additionally saving 50,000 cubic yards of paper.
Looking for more tips on how you can have a more sustainable holiday season or lifestyle? Check out the Recyclops Blog here for weekly sustainability tips and guides.
Our team at Recyclops makes it easy to recycle today straight from the convenience of your home. With our service, you know that your recyclables are going to a designated recycling facility and not a landfill. Learn more about where your recycling goes here.
Depending on your location, recycling is as easy as putting all your materials in one or more bags (depending on how many you have) and putting them right on your doorstep or curbside. Your local Recyclops driver will be there to pick up your materials and ensure they arrive at the destination. And don’t worry about making space for another bin, Recyclops bags or carts come with all our services and pickups come at your convenience.
We want to make recycling easy and simple, and that starts with recycling on your schedule.