Celebrate the Holidays with More Joy and Less Waste

The holiday season should feel full of connection, not overstuffed trash cans. From gift wrap and shipping materials to leftovers that don’t get eaten, it’s easy for waste to pile up this time of year. Eco-Cycle’s 2025 Zero Waste Holiday Guide brings together simple, practical tips so you can enjoy the traditions you love while cutting back on what gets thrown away.

Eco-Cycle’s two-page 2025 Zero Waste Holiday Guide guide offers ideas for greener gifting, holiday decorating, and meaningful celebrations. For Boulder County residents, page 2 doubles as a quick-reference chart for what to do with common holiday items locally—what goes in your curbside recycling bin, what you can recycle  at the Eco-Cycle/City of Boulder Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials (CHaRM), and special tree recycling options across the county.The guide is available in English and in Spanish: Guía para las festividades con cero desperdicios

What You’ll Find in the Zero Waste Holiday Guide

Inside the guide, you’ll find quick tips to help you:

• Rethink wrapping and packaging—Lower-waste options for wrapping gifts and shipping packages, plus what to avoid so your paper can actually be recycled where accepted.
• Give “more than stuff”—Ideas for experiences, donations, practical reusables, and homemade treats that don’t create long-lasting waste.
• Choose greener cards and décor—How to keep the sparkle and sentiment while steering clear of non-recyclable glitter, foil, and plastics.
• Host a Zero Waste gathering—Simple swaps to move away from disposables, reduce food waste, and make cleanup easier.

Cut back on junk mail—Steps to slow the flood of catalogs and sales flyers so you can focus on what you really need.

Dive Deeper: Holiday Recycling FAQs

Here are more details on some frequently asked questions.

• Gift wrap and packaging
  Learn why most traditional wrapping paper is so challenging to recycle and explore eco-friendly holiday wrapping alternatives in “Unwrapping Wrapping Paper Recycling”
• Broken holiday lights
  Find out where and how to recycle old string lights—and why they’re collected separately from other cables—by reading “How to Recycle Christmas Lights and Holiday Lights in Boulder County”
• Christmas tree recycling
  When the season winds down, your tree still has one more gift to give. “Where to Take Your Christmas Tree for Recycling in Boulder County” explains why tree recycling matters for climate and soil health and lists local drop-off and curbside options.
• Rigid white foam from shipping boxes
  Large gifts, such as electronics,  often arrive packed in rigid white #6 foam that can’t go in your curbside recycling bin. “Rigid White Foam Recycling: Why and How to Recycle at the Eco-Cycle/City of Boulder CHaRM” walks you through how to recycle this material properly and what it becomes next.

Have a great holiday season, and cheers to a Zero Waste New Year!