Christmas light recycling program

Beginning today, Snyders Drug Stores around the Twin Cities will be collecting old strings of lights to be recycled. They will even offer coupons to those who use the recycling program. Other Minnesota cities will set up recycling centers as well, including Duluth, Mankato, St. Cloud, Pine City, Pelican Rapids, Staples, Park Rapids, Crookston, and Ely. The program will continue through January 10.

This free program, "Recycle Your Holidays," is a great way to reduce waste and encourage Minnesotans to upgrade to more energy efficient LED lights. Recycling copper uses far less energy than extracting new copper, and copper is a fairly expensive metal, so this program will almost certainly pay for itself. Every part of the light strings will be recycled, so nothing will end up in a landfill.

I never knew that holiday light recycling programs existed, even though I try hard to stay on top of what can and can't be recycled. In the past, you had to mail the lights to a recycling center, so this is a big step in making recycling easier and more accessible to the general public.

The Recycling Association of Minnesota organized the program with the goal of saving energy and the hope that this idea will spread nationwide. So please take your old, broken Christmas lights to Snyders (or the nearest recycling center) and do something good for Minnesota!

Check out this MPR article for more in depth coverage. And this Whole Foods blog has some good things to say too.