Guy Goes Green

Wannabe green guy going green

Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’

Pictures of our recycling Christmas

December 27th, 2009

This week’s green task has been very interesting and in the Christmas spirit. Ashley’s green challenge for the week has been to recycle the wrapping paper we collect from our families. We have collected all of the recyclables and started the process of going through this today. Below is a picture outline of what we have done today.

I have to be honest that Ashley really came through and did most of this today. Since we have been hit with a massive snowstorm in the upper mid-west, I have spent a good chunk of time clearing our driveway and my awesome wife spent a good part of the day separating useful paper, recycling, ribbons/bows, boxes and the scraps. My count was off the other day and we ended up with 12 bags of gift wrapping.

She then went through all of the paper and separated all of the paper that can be reused as wrapping paper:

Then the tissue for bags:

Bows and ribbons:

We did end up with a little garbage:

We now have 4 bags of scraps that we are going to try and do some sort of craft with and a little newspaper that is going into the recycling. I am not exactly sure what we are going to do with the scrap wrapping paper, but I would like to make some of our own homemade paper out of it. I will keep you updated on what we decide to do with the scraps and let me know if you have any great ideas. Also, I know it is a little late… but enjoy my online video Christmas Card.

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Posted in Week 10 Gift Wrap

Tags: Christmas wrapping

Christmas wrapping recycle debacle

December 26th, 2009

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and wanted to give you all a quick update on this week’s green task. For those just joining us, my wife assigns me a green challenge every week and this week’s challenge is to recycle wrapping paper. This weekend is turning out to be very hectic because of a massive snow storm (we just got stuck pulling into our driveway), family fun (getting to spend some great time with our families) and general Christmas chaos…. So it is going to be a little short. So, we have now harvested most of the wrapping paper we will accumulate.

We ended up leaving the fam’s house a bit earlier than expected that night and think we may have a bag or two left to collect, but other than that, we have all of the paper goods at our home. As expected, we have a large amount of paper and we are not quite sure what the heck we are going to do.

About 14 garbage bags… 14 whole bags of wrapping paper. We have gone through one bag and we were able to redeem about half of it as wrapping paper that we can use in the future. If this rate continues, we will have 7 bags of unusable wrapping paper. I will keep you updated on what happens. Please let me know if you have any suggestions in the comments area below.

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Posted in Week 10 Gift Wrap

Tags: Christmas recycle

Let my greener Christmas begin

December 24th, 2009

It is Christmas Eve day and the oomph behind this week’s task starts this evening. On top of that, we are getting a snow storm right now. My green task for the week is to recycle or reuse gift wrapping from our family’s houses and our own. Tonight I will likely collect over 10 garbage bags of wrapping paper. So, I will be driving around in my little Saturn, 12 inches deep in snow with 10 bags of wrapping paper. What am I going to do?

I had contacted the City of Fargo and they indicated that gift wrapping cannot be recycled because of contaminants. The bows, ribbons and foiled paper cause issues with recycling. I was really counting on this since I know I am going to collect A TON of wrapping from the 40+ people we will be collecting wrapping from.

I think I will have to do some of the crafts I outlined in a previous post. Actually, I think I am really looking forward to trying to make my own paper out of the stuff that cannot be used elsewhere. Other than that, we will try to harvest usable wrapping paper out of what is left and go from there.

Tonight we wrapped our gifts and I am very proud of our green wrapping! We only used newspaper, reused gift bags and reused gift wrapping to package our gifts. I did use some tags that we already had, but expect to use homemade ones from now on. If you have any green stories about this Christmas or previous holidays, please tell me about them in the comment area below.