Boxing Day – also known as Second Christmas Day or Day of Goodwill – is a holiday traditionally celebrated in countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany and Hong Kong, just to name a few. It falls the day after Christmas – on December 26 – and is thought to date back to the Middle Ages when royalty and affluent families would fill Christmas boxes with gifts and money for servants and those in need on their lands. Today, the tradition continues as employers give gifts to their employees on this day, donations are made to the needy, and stores hold massive sales similar to Black Friday in the United States.
Here at Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful, we’d like to propose our own unique take on Boxing Day. While we strongly encourage you to follow the example set by the traditional holiday and give to those in need – such as donating clothes and other items to local thrift shops or organizations like Goodwill or The Salvation Army (the ultimate form of recycling in our book!), we also wish to suggest a more “literal” approach. With the skyrocketing growth of e-commerce, so follows the number of packages and cardboard boxes shipped to homes and businesses throughout the world. In a recent press release, the United States Postal Service – which is currently delivering 7 days a week up until Christmas Day in high volume areas – expects double digit package volume growth… to the tune of 450 to 470 million packages. That doesn’t even include numbers from other shipping service providers like UPS, FedEx, DHL and more!
Rather than simply cutting open those cardboard boxes to remove your gift, and then throwing them in the trash bin or sticking them by the curb for you garbage service provider to remove – Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful urges you to drop them off at one of the following convenient locations throughout Gwinnett:
RECYCLING BANK OF GWINNETT
Phone: 770-242-6433
4300 Satellite Blvd
Duluth, GA 30096
Hours of Operation: 24/7
CARAUSTAR PAPER RECYCLING
Phone: 770-451-1334
4069 Winters Chapel Rd
Doraville, GA 30360
Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday 7:30am-4:30pm
PRATT RECYCLING
Phone: 770-602-1190
1005 Sigman Road
Conyers, GA 30013
Hours of Operation: 24/7
SNELLVILLE RECYCLING CENTER
Phone: 770-985-3539
2531 Marigold Rd
Snellville, GA 30078
Hours of Operation: Monday-Saturday 8am-5pm
What Happens to a Cardboard Box After It’s Recycled?
When cardboard breaks down in landfill it creates methane, a major greenhouse gas with a global warming capacity 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.* However, when recycling, cardboard is one of the easiest materials to break down for use in other products – giving that box that contained this year’s Christmas sweater from Aunt Rita a valuable second life. Recycled cardboard might become a wide variety of paper products such as greeting cards, gift tags, art paper, paper towels, paper plates, calendars and more. It might also be used for sound-proofing material, insulation, tote bags, home décor, and even furniture.
For more information about recycling in Gwinnett, please visit the Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful website at www.gwinnettcb.org and click on the Recycle Now button in the top right-hand of the screen. We wish you a very Happy Holiday Season and look forward to seeing YOU on Boxing Day at the Recycling Bank of Gwinnett or one of the other recycling destinations listed above!
Sources: “Boxing Day” Wikipedia.org; * Planet Ark Environmental Foundation “National Recycling Week Factsheet”; “Postal Service to deliver packages seven days a week during holidays” USPS.com
Image Credit: Homero Chapa/Stockvault.net