How to Green Your Holiday Cleanup

After the holidays, there's a lot of mess to be cleaned up, from burned pans and discarded wrapping paper to the dead tree in your living room. Here are some ways to clean green!

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Recycle Your Tree. Most local boy scout troops have a drive this time of year to pick up your tree and recycle it; all you need to do is contact your local troop and leave your tree out front on a given day. Otherwise, check with your local recycling facility to see if they have the means to recycle your tree.

2. Scrape Into a Pile. Tons of leftovers? Tidbits left on plates? Don't throw that food away--scrape it into a compost pile outside. Even though it's cold now, this will thaw in the spring to become strong fertilizer for your garden or lawn.

3. Recycle Your Wrapping. Make a separate bag for all of the wrapping paper as you open gifts this holiday, and you can drop the whole bag off at your recycling point as fully recyclable paper.

4. Save the Ornaments, Ditch the Tinsel. As you pluck the tinsel off the tree this year, consider replacing it with more ornaments next year instead--ornaments you can use again and again, but tinsel is difficult to reuse.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep an eye on your trash--if you're throwing away massive quantities of stuff, there's a good chance you could reuse a lot of it.