From Thanksgiving to New Years Day, household waste increases by more than 25%. Added food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons - it all adds up to an additional 1 million tons a week to our landfills. (EPA and Use Less Stuff)
In the U.S., annual trash from gift-wrap and shopping bags totals 4 million tons. (Use Less Stuff, 1998)
1.9 billion Christmas cards are sent to friends and loved ones every year, making Christmas the largest card-sending occasion in the United States. (Hallmark research)
The amount of cards sold during the holiday season would fill a football field 10 stories high, and requires the harvesting of nearly 300,000 trees. (Use Less Stuff)
38,000 miles of ribbon is thrown out each year. The Earth's circumference is 25,000 miles - enough to tie a bow around the Earth.
Half of the paper America consumes is used to wrap and decorate consumer products. (The Recycler's Handbook, 1990)
clipped from: www.recycleworks.org