Springfield, Mo. Encourages Residents to Recycle Holiday Waste, Excess Food

Missouri’s Springfield Environmental Services encourages residents to think about recycling during the holiday season.

“We’re going to see a pretty significant uptick in waste overall, especially that week after Christmas. So traditionally, after the week of Christmas, we’re going to see our tonnage, sometimes double at the landfill. That’s just because we’re getting a lot more stuff, we’re getting a lot more packaging with that stuff,” said Ashley Krug, market development coordinator for Springfield Environmental Services.

Residents are encouraged to set aside their glitter-free wrapping paper, cardboard boxes, and paper mailers to recycle. Plus, Springfield Environmental Services wants residents to bring their excess food to facilities for composting.

“We’re putting away about fourteen percent of what we send to our landfill is food waste, and that has usable life and other ways for us through composting,” said Krug. “So we’re going to take things like meat and dairy and leftovers, that kind of congealed thing that you forgot that you had from a holiday dinner, we’re going to be able to take that and turn that into compost, which is not something you’d necessarily compost at home because you’d invite a lot of neighborhood critters into your backyard that you might not want we can take those items on.”

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