Each week EPA posts a question related to the environment on its website. This week’s question was quite timely.

One of the “gifts of the season” we usually overlook is the amount of STUFF we have left over - food scraps, dead batteries, old fir trees, and more, says EPA. How will you handle holiday waste?

Here are three responses EPA received:

“Wrapping, plastics, etc will be recycled in single stream by our township. Christmas trees will be chipped and offered as mulch by township in their program to recycle garden and lawn waste.”

“I work for one of Covanta Energy’s Biomass Power Plants. We started a program called ‘Make your Xmas Renewable.’ We allow the community to drop off Christmas trees at our site. We will use the trees as renewable fuel for our Biomass Power plant.”

“We tried to decrease the amount of waste this year. We saved last year’s gift bags and wrapping paper. We went to a Potluck Christmas Party and each of the guests wrapped a plate to go at the end. We gave fewer gifts with lots of packaging. We use a fake Christmas tree so no waste there. This holiday season brought so many lessons for the whole world. I’m lucky to have what I do so reducing what I waste is in the forefront of my mind.”