recycled tree

There's more than one way to recycle a tree. Credit: Zen, Flickr

Along with all the extra holiday shopping, celebrating, and eating and drinking comes a lot of extra holiday waste. About a million tons of extra waste to be exact. Each year, Americans increase their waste by about 25% between Thanksgiving and New Year's, bringing our trash load from 4 million tons up to 5 million tons, according to the EPA.

Americans waste about 28 million pounds of edible food each year (according to Use Less Stuff) and about 30 million of the 50 million Christmas trees that are purchased each year go in the landfill instead of being recycled.

For tips on how to minimize your waste this holiday season, check out these tips from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.