Use Less Stuff Day
November 16, 2006 

This date is significant because it marks the beginning of the high-waste holiday season.  During the five weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years, it is estimated that the nation’s trash increases by an extra one million tons per week! 

The purpose of Use Less Stuff Day is to point out the necessity of creating less waste in the first place, and to show how easily and profitably source reduction can be made a part of our lives.  “Using less stuff” means “reduce” rather that “reuse” or “recycle.” 

So, to help trim the trash while trimming the tree, you can reduce waste while you eat, drink, and make merry this holiday season.  Go ahead, celebrate the holidays while still using less stuff! 

Ways To Trim Your Holiday Wasteline

	Turn down the heat before the guests arrive.  You’ll save energy while the extra body heat of your guests will warm up the room.
	After your party, don’t throw away the leftovers!  Put them in plastic containers or bags and send them home with guests, or donate to a local food bank.
	Rent dishes and glassware, making your party more elegant and eliminating excess trash.
	Be creative, instead of buying placemats or table decorations, make your own.  Cut old cards into shapes and press between two pieces of contact paper.
	Use your own camera instead of using disposable cameras and use rolls of 36 instead of 12 exposures.  You’ll reduce waste by 67%, saving about $4.00, or 40% in cost.
	Give gifts that encourage others to use less stuff, like a book about making crafts from reusable items, cookbook for leftovers, reusable tote bags.
	Shop for gifts at antique stores, estate sales or flea markets, since one person’s trash is another’s treasure.
	Instead of wrapping gifts for the kids, hide the presents, plant clues to where they’re hidden and make the search into a treasure hunt.
	Drop off extra packing peanuts at local private mailing centers.
	Kid’s art work is perfect wrapping for presents to proud grandparents.
	Or better yet, think of gifts that don’t have to be wrapped at all, such as: tickets to concerts, museums, or sporting events, gift certificates, house plants, or even gifts or your own time.
	Get a tree that can be planted or mulched afterward, or buy an artificial one.

Did you know...If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet. 

Another idea behind Use Less Stuff Day is to bring waste prevention or source reduction to the forefront of the public consciousness.  Recycling gets a lot of attention, but as important as it is, it is not as important as using less stuff.  If we are to significantly reduce pollution and waste, we must emphasize source reduction.  And everyone, in some small way, needs to do his or her part. 

Use Less Stuff by using a fuel efficient car.  (Improving gas mileage by mere one mile per gallon would save 8.1 billion gallons of gas and $9.8 billion annually!)  Tune up your car, properly inflate your tires, slow down, avoid jack-rabbit starts and turn off the engine while waiting.  Better yet, drive less, walk more, car-pool, ride a bicycle or take public transportation. 

 Look for products that come in minimal packaging.  Buy concentrates and purchase refills that come in flexible packaging.  Buy in bulk as long as you can efficiently use up all of the product in the package.  Reuse packaging as much as possible, especially paper and plastic bags, glass and plastic containers, cans, etc. or recycle them if at all possible.  Newspaper comics can be reused as gift wrap, and other parts of the paper can be used as packing material.

Be realistic about how much food the people you serve will eat, and plan accordingly.  Compost food scraps and yard debris.  You can use your compost as a mulch too.  Yard and food wastes combined account for 22% of the household trash we generate.

 Save water by fixing leaky faucets, hoses and couplings.  Take shorter showers or smaller baths, and switch to a low-flow shower head.

 Properly insulate your home through caulking and weatherstripping and by using thermal windows and draft guards.  Also turn down the heat and use automatic turn-back thermostats.  Buy energy efficient lighting and appliances.  (Compact fluorescent bulbs, for example, produce up to four times as much light per watt as incandescent bulbs).

Reduce junk mail.  Call the catalog companies, etc. and ask to be taken off their lists.