Recycling Christmas Waste
January 6th is traditionally known as Twelfth Night when all the Christmas decorations are taken down, legend has it that failure to do so will bring the occupants of the house bad luck! If the decorations are not taken down on this date, they should be left up all year.
Over the centuries our calendars have changed as has the distinction between day and night in relation to the way dates were calculated. Prior to the Victorian era, decorations of Holly and Mistletoe would be kept up until February 2nd which was Candlemas Day and 40 days after the birth of Christ.
Victorian Britain began the twelve days of Christmas celebrations at midnight Christmas Eve with Twelfth Night being called Twelfth Eve and a day earlier on January 5th. The following day being known as Twelfth Day which in the religious calendar is epiphany, the last day of the Christmas celebration as we know it today.
Today we are rightly encouraged to recycle almost everything. The festive season is one of the periods of the year when, as a nation, we have the most household rubbish to dispose of.
Most local council refuse sites have separate areas where cards, paper and Christmas Trees can be placed for recycling. Alternatively the out of town retail sites usually have excellent recycling facilities for glass, paper and cardboard.
Christmas Trees can be taken to most of the large Garden Centres where they will be recycled for you. We can all do our bit to put back what we have taken out as indicated by the facts and figures below.
* Three million tonnes of rubbish will be produced by households over the Christmas season
* 750 million glass containers will be thrown out
* 500 million drinks cans will be used and discarded
* 8 million Christmas Trees will be bought creating 9,000 tonnes of waste
* A billion Christmas cards will be sent
* An estimated 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper will have been used.
*The above statistics courtesy of LGA media office.
All the above items can be recycled and put back to good use.
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