The holiday season brings gifts, good cheer, and plenty of extra waste. To help Calgarians manage it responsibly, The City is sharing tips to reduce, reuse, and ensure items like gift wrap, boxes, and holiday food scraps are sorted into the correct bins.
Reuse and reduce this Christmas.
By rethinking traditions and getting creative, Calgarians can reduce the waste that ends up in their bins. Below are some holiday tips to get Calgarians started.
- Give the gift of experiences rather than physical goods.
- Buy items that come with less packaging or in recyclable packaging.
- Use fabric, newspaper/flyers, or old calendars to wrap gifts.
- Save gift wrap, gift bags, bows, and ribbons for reuse.
- Plan your meals and holiday food shopping to prevent waste and save money.
- Skip the paper napkins in favour of a reusable cloth material.
- Use reusable containers for leftovers instead of plastic wrap or tin foil.
Put your holiday waste in the right bin.
Put the following recyclables loose (not in a bag unless otherwise stated) into your blue cart:
- Wrapping paper and tissue paper.
- Cardboard boxes, gift boxes, shoe and shipping boxes – flatten your boxes to make extra room in your blue cart.
- Paper gift bags – remove the handles before recycling.
- Holiday cards and envelopes.
- Moulded plastic packaging with recycling symbol #1-7 (commonly found with electronics and kid’s toys).
- Bubble wrap – bundle with other stretchy plastic bags and tie the handles closed.
- Cookie and chocolate tins – eat the cookies and chocolates first.
Use your green cart to compost such food items as:
- Turkey carcasses and other bones.
- Pastries, cookies, cakes, and muffins.
- Plate scrapings and vegetable scraps.
- All food-soiled paper, including napkins, paper plates, coffee filters, baking paper and liners.
- Cooking oil, lard, shortening, jam, butter, sauces, grease, dips, salad dressing, mayonnaise, and gravy.
After recycling and composting the right items, make sure to put these end-of-use products in the black cart as garbage.
- Non-recyclable gift wrap like tinsel, cellophane, metallic and foil gift wrap.
- Broken household items like dishes, ornaments, lights, and artificial Christmas trees.
Items such as old and used electronics, dead batteries, and most shipping foam and takeout containers can be taken in one convenient trip to a City Eco Centre.
Calgarians can learn more holiday waste tips at calgary.ca/holidaywaste.
After the holidays, don’t let those real Christmas trees go to waste.
Calgarians have two options to compost their real Christmas tree. For both options, all lights, ornaments, tinsel, string, and tree stands must be removed.
Option 1: Use your green cart –cut tree into small pieces to fit inside the green cart, making sure the lid can close.
Option 2: Bring to a tree drop-off location – available across the city from December 26, 2024, to January 31, 2025. Do not wrap or bag your tree.For a full list of locations visit calgary.ca/christmastree.
