Recycling Tips for an Environmentally Friendly Holiday Season
Deck the halls with boughs of… reclaimed materials! With children, colleagues, parents, teachers, extended family and neighbors on your shopping list, gift giving and holiday decorating can become pricey. Ditch the expensive store items and opt for homemade solutions, made from natural or recycled materials, to get more bang for your buck. Gershow has provided a list of eco-friendly décor and gift options:
1. Puzzle pieces can become reindeer or wreaths.
2. Burned out light bulbs with some paint make the perfect penguin, snowman or reindeer that serve as hanging ornaments.
3. Tin cans can be stacked and painted white to create a snowman; or cover one with candy canes to hold poinsettias or other festive plants.
4. Toilet paper rolls can be folded to create mini gift boxes (great for jewelry) or ornaments.
5. Wine corks combined with sturdy twigs turn into miniature reindeer. You can also add decorative ribbon to make ornaments or glue them to a paper circle to create a wreath.
6. For a fun spin on outside décor, cut a log on an angle and paint the exposed tops to resemble holiday characters, or add paint or glitter glue to pine cones.
7. White soda bottle caps glued three in a row will create hanging snowman ornaments, or you can string green ribbon through soda tabs to make a wreath.
8. Build a Menorah with eight empty paper rolls, a paper towel roll and blue and white construction paper. For the Seven Candles (Mishumaa Sabre) for Kwanzaa, use seven empty paper rolls and cover using black, red and green construction paper. Stack cardboard boxes – large to small – to create a Kinara (candle stand).
9. Keyboard or Scrabble pieces can be used to spell out a message of joy on cards, signs and other décor.
10. Magazines, old holiday cards and scrap paper can be cut up to create a banner, a Star of David or snowflakes.
Do you have other great green holiday design ideas? We’d love to add them! Contact us at (631) 289-6188 or www-info@gershow.com. Wishing you the happiest holiday season!
Gershow Recycling takes aluminum, brass, copper, steel, cast iron, appliances, cars and vehicles. In keeping with its philosophy of “Conserving the Future by Recycling the Past,” Gershow Recycling purchases scrap metal that would otherwise have wound up in local landfills and turns them into high-quality scrap products for recycling. Gershow has nine locations in Brooklyn, New Hyde Park, Valley Stream, Freeport, Lindenhurst, Huntington Station, Bay Shore, Medford and Riverhead. For more information, call (631) 289-6188.
