Recycle Your Holiday

It may be easier to throw your old Christmas lights in the trash, but a landfill is not the appropriate place for old lights. These are items that can be recycled, so it is wasteful to throw them in the trash. There are materials like copper and plastic that can be processed and repurposed for other uses once they have been removed from the light set.

A Christmas tree is biodegradable; its branches may be removed, chipped, and used as mulch to enrich a garden or used as paths for hiking trails. There are also benefits to wildlife during winter months, brush piles offer food, nutrients, and shelter to animals, fish, and soil.

If one of the leftovers from your Thanksgiving feast is "FOG" (that is fats, oils, and grease), remember that improperly disposing of such materials down the drain can clog pipes and cause sewage backups in your home or in the public sewer system. Proper disposal of these products allows used cooking oil to be recycled into usable products such as biodiesel fuel. 

Used Cooking Oil Disposal

Used cooking oil can be collected in a sealed container and taken to the City of St. Augustine Wastewater Treatment Plant at 501 Riberia Street for recycling. Email the Wastewater Treatment Plant or call at 904-825-1055 or for more information.

Recycling electronics recovers valuable materials that can be used to make new products. As a result, we save energy, reduce pollution, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and save natural resources by extracting fewer raw materials from the earth.