Parents, do you love Halloween? Letting your kids get dressed up and pillage the community for all sorts of candy that you actually don’t want them to eat. Halloween is fun. Unfortunately, it leads to a lot of waste. Did you know that Americans purchase more than half a billion pounds of candy per year? A lot of that is around Halloween and a fair bit ends up in the trash can.
Do you have a “Switch Witch” who comes shortly after Halloween to buy or steal candy from your children and replace it with a toy or money? Does this all of that candy then get tossed in the garbage where it ultimately gets trucked 90 miles to fester in the Mud Lake landfill? Or do your kids sort out the candy that they don’t like and throw it in the trash? TVCR would like to save this unwanted candy from the landfill.
While we agree that most modern day candy is pretty toxic stuff and probably shouldn’t be consumed by any of us, we hate to see it all end up in the landfill when we know local businesses are going out to buy individually wrapped candy for their candy dishes. Teton Valley Community Recycling would like to re-home your unwanted Halloween candy. Instead of dumping it in the trash, bring it to the GeoTourism Center in Driggs where TVCR’s Switch Witch will be collecting unwanted candy and bringing it to banks, shops, the Transfer Station, and many of the other businesses that hand out treats at their front desk.
We know we’re not saving the world by doing this, but we’d rather see perfectly good candy be re-used rather than thrown in the garbage and we can save local businesses a little money as well. Waste not, want not.
Your old jack o’lantern can be donated to local goat or pig farmers, put into your backyard compost, or you can bring them to the Jackson Rodeo grounds on Saturday Nov. 3 from 1-4 pm for the great pumpkin drop (they will be composted with yard waste.) Please note: Teton County, Idaho sends old pumpkins to the landfill with household waste, so we encourage you to use a better option where it will return to soil.
We’d also like to draw your attention to upcoming recycling collections happening at the GeoTourism Center in November, TVCR will be collecting holiday light string for recycling. String lights are full of useful metals that can be extracted and reused. For the month of December, TVCR will be hosting our popular “Free Gift Wrap Station” at the GeoTourism Center – where you can donate unwanted gift wrap, gift bags, holiday cards, calendars and other items for the rest of the community to reuse and wrap their gifts. And starting in January, we team up with Habitat Restore to collect your battered old blue jeans in the annual “Denim Drive” – collecting used blue denim to recycle into insulation for affordable houses. So, keep your eyes peeled and be prepared to visit the GeoTourism Center for your random recycling collection services not offered elsewhere in the valley. And while you are there, you can recycle batteries, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, cereal bags, and foil energy bar wrappers at our TerraCycle Station.
