Well, apparently, food storage baggies can take as long as 1,000 years to decompose! That’s insanity! Plus all the baggies that escape the landfill end up in places like the ocean or other delicate eco-systems. I’m not the greenest person on the planet but baggies have got to go.

I’ve already switched from plastic to byob but the ziploc thing- now I’ve got to find another way. Thanks idealbite...keep it coming!
Thanks idealbite!

We “recycle” electronics by shipping them back overseas to poverty-stricken countries. “About 50 to 80 percent of the 300,000 to 400,000 tons of electronics collected for recycling in the U.S. each year ends up undergoing this overseas journey”. Read more.

2. Even the aliens can see our junk.

Fresh Kills Landfill (Staten Island) can be seen from space! It served “New York City for a little over 50 years, from 1948 to 2001…at its peak, the dump received 29,000 tons of garbage daily, which amounts to about 10 million tons a year.” That’s a major pile of junk. Want to know more information about the landfill? Check out the landfill diaries.

3. Badnews…ballparks?

Ballparks are built on toxic landfills! Say what? Comiskey Park, Mile High Stadium, and Giants Stadium in New Jersey are prime examples. Four New York Giants players came down with cancer within a decade of the stadium construction. Read more, here.

4. I’m bummed for the birds.

Birds are increasingly mistaking plastic for food and feedingit to their chicks! “Albatross parents, which can live for 60 years, repeatedly mistake plastic as a source of food and funnel it directly into their chicks.” (National Geographic)

5. Plastic is FREAKING ME OUT.

According to a National Geographic report, “A floating heap of plastic trash the size of Texas floats in the Pacific ocean, containing everlasting by products of our modern life: plastic toys, plastic bags, plastic bottles and more.”

6. Junk Mail is worse than I realized!

Check it: In 2005, 5.8 million tons of catalogs and other direct mailings ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream – enough to fill over 450,000 garbage trucks. Parked bumper to bumper these garbage trucks would extend from Atlanta to Albuquerque. Less than 36% of this ad mail was recycled. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

Great…now I feel dirty.

1. Whoa- 28 billion pounds of edible food is thrown away each year.

2. Yowza! 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high.

3. Hey, people, one card less and we’d save 50,000 cubic yards of paper…not bad.

4. We only use 8,000+ miles of ribbon during the holiday season (Newsweek).

5. Seriously, only 30 million real Christmas trees are sold in the U.S. each year, according to the National Christmas Tree Association.

6. Around 2 billion Christmas cards will be sent by Americans this year (Hallmark). That’s about 300k trees!

7. We eat too much- one uneaten tablespoon of mashed potatoes per person would add 16 million pounds.

8. Apparently, 10 million fake trees are sold every year in the U.S. – most come from China. Anyone want to make bets on lead paint?

9. The average amount spent on giftwrap? $78 that will go right to the landfill.

10. One can of trash is the result of 70 cans of waste! So, if you think about it in terms of Christmas carnage-3 post-santa trash cans filled with toy packaging, boxes and wrapping paper would mean 210 trash bags of waste waste were generated just to make that Christmas heap!

11. It takes 7 to 10 years to grow a Christmas tree, whose short but entirely useful product life is about one month.

12. Christmas trees are usually grown on tree farms that use large amounts of pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers. But those chemicals are probably boidegradable, right?

13. The ingredients for the average U.S. meal have traveled 1,200 miles by the time they reach the plate. Two words: petroleum & refrigeration.

14. Shout out to the UK- they will use an extra 500 million aluminium drinks cans over the festive period. I can only imagine what our collective US soda addiction aftermath looks like. Frightening.

15. How much trash is generated annually from the gift wrap and shopping bags? Only 4,000,000 tons.

16. Birds, glorious birds-22 million turkeys are consumed every year on December 25. Gobble, gobble.

17. UK, you’re good about fessing up- this year? 125,000 tons of plastic packaging will be dumped!

18. Half of the paper America consumes is used to wrap and decorate consumer products. (The Recycler’s Handbook, 1990)

19. About 40% of batteries are purchased during the holidays! Woo-hoo for WEEE …

20. Lead-tainted toys must go somewhere to die, including some 2.2 million Chinese-made toys contaminated with lead paint.

21. Consumers spent over 15 billion dollars in 2005 on new holiday decorations including tree ornaments and lights (probably tainted with lead…nice).

22. Well over 20 million trees will get hacked over the holiday.

23. Three gifts wrapped per American family total enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. (that’s a lot of yardage!)

24. Melamine is a tasty stocking stuffer! Tainted candies (sweet tooth anyone?) overseas sales have reached $160 million over the past five years. Whoa.

25. Only 1% of the crap we buy, use and sell is still within use after six months. Still worth it?

So, I guess we’ll just have a holly, jolly Christmas? Let’s just make sure mother earth is invited!

Need help keeping it under control? Check out

42 Ways to Watch Your Holiday Wasteline.

The Hassle-Free Holiday Guide

Tips for an Eco-Friendly Holiday

Need more? See these facts you never knew!

Earth911

Recycling Consortium

To get in the mood., check out the story of stuff.