During the Christmas season, many of us enjoy lighting candles, eating some ham and snacking on chocolate confections, curled up on the couch. This also generates different kinds of waste that are not daily occurrences in everyday recycling. TYS has listed the best seasonal recycling tips. These tips help you avoid confusion at the sorting station and they are also environmentally friendly:
1.Wrapping paper and ribbons
Wrapping paper and ribbons contain plenty of printing ink, tape and stickers, which is why they must be sorted in burnable waste.
2. Packaging
Confectionary and cookie packages and toy boxes should be sorted into cardboard waste, along with large, flattened cardboard boxes. The paper-like sheets separating the layers of confectionary boxes also belong with cardboard. The plastic wrapping of the box and the plastic base under the confectionaries should be sorted into plastic waste. The wrappings of confectionaries and sweets can be made of aluminium (metal collection), plastic (plastic collection) or paper (cardboard collection).
3. Candles
Stearin and the ends of candles should go to burnable waste. Lanterns made with glass cannot be sorted into recycled glass. The plastic shells of e.g. lantern candles should also be sorted into mixed waste. The metal shells of tealight candles and outdoor candles should be cleaned and sorted into metal waste.
4. Christmas tree
Christmas tree is burnable waste. Plastic trees, however, often contain metal and should be sorted into metal waste.
5. Ham’s cooking stock and grease
Before putting ham’s cooking stock and grease into biowaste or burnable waste, you should cool it down until it solidifies or absorb it into paper. NOTE! You MUST NEVER pour ham’s cooking stock or grease into the sewer. They could block the sewers when cooling down!
- Tip – use the stock for cooking later: By freezing the cooking stock in small single-use containers, you can easily use it for cooking at a later date.
- Tip – Fuel from cooking grease: Once again, Kinkkutemppu will recycle the cooking grease of hams during the Christmas season. Recover the cooking fat of your Christmas ham, turkey, fish or even root vegetable chips, put it in an empty milk carton and take it the to recycling station. You can find your nearest recycling station at kinkkutemppu.com
6. Broken Christmas ornaments
Tree ornaments, tinsel, the tree-top star and other Christmas decorations are all mixed waste. If more than half of the decoration is metal, it should be sorted into metal waste. Broken Christmas lights and electric candles are electric scrap, and can be taken to large stores selling them (specialist stores, department stores), the Sortti station or Turun Ekotori Reuse Centre.
7. New Year Eve’s tin
If you still have tin at home for the old New Year Eve’s tradition of melting the metal for the purposes of telling the future, the pieces must be taken to hazardous waste collection. Selling the small pieces of tin intended for this purpose is now prohibited and they are considered hazardous waste due to their high lead content.
