Welcome back to the 12 Days of Trash: the final showdown between communication and contamination.
Holiday season has long since wrapped up, but the waste (and joy!) it brings us still lingers.
The extra 2.9 billion tons of waste in landfills per week has stopped. What hasn’t is the need for proper disposal of problematic items.
We know some of your citizens recycled, re-used, and reduced fantastically this holiday season. We also know others did not – and not necessarily through fault of their own, but due to the lack of easily accessible information needed to make the proper choices.
We’ve covered much of how to educate citizens on proper disposal, and we’ll continue to do so below.
First, we wanted to discuss the problem of changing collection days and times due to:
- Weather delays caused by snow, ice, or wind
- Seasonal Interruptions due to public holidays
- Special Collections for items not usually collected year round
How can you best communicate these changes to your citizens, ensuring everyone is on the same page, reducing confusion and angry phone calls in the process?
Watch the two minute video below, and check out our Mobile App web page, to learn more:
12 Days of Trash - The Last 4 Days
Alright! Our final four items include:
- Tissue Paper
- Ribbons, Bows & Gift Tags (Christmas Bows, Gift Ribbon, Plastic Ribbon)
- Gift bags: Cellophane, Foil or Plasticized (Mixed-Material Bags, Present Bag, Bath & Body Works Bag) & Gift Cards
- Christmas Tree (Natural) & Christmas Tree (Artificial)
By this point, you’re probably asking yourself: what would The City of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan do?
See how they handle the education, communication, and disposal of this week’s items utilizing their Waste Wizard tool:
As Saskatoon says: “If you can’t reduce waste, then divert it at least.”
Keep Up With Holiday Waste
This week, all 4 Days of Trash can be found on our social feed.
To keep up with us live, follow our LinkedIn page or our Facebook page, where you can get all our updates daily.
For more on how to effectively tackle Holiday Waste, check out 20 Ways to Improve Your Recycling Communication.
For more around year end festivities, check out 23 Reasons to Celebrate Waste & Recycling in 2023.
In summary, recycling can be confusing all year round, but we definitely see new and unusual items during the holidays causing extra confusion and contamination, during a time when people’s minds are usually anywhere other than proper waste disposal.
Add on the extra confusion from holidays and weather impacting scheduled pickups, and it can all be a little much.
To Ho-Ho-Halt holiday waste contamination, help your citizens make better choices with our purpose-built Community tools, designed to curb contamination, streamline communication, and protect the planet.
