by Ken Quintanilla
Guam - Although green is one of the colors of Christmas, we tend to forget how to be environmentally friendly with all the busy shopping and family gatherings. Guam Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson Tammy Jo Anderson Taft said, "The holidays we see people creating more waste with more parties, with more packaging and things like that but what you don't want to give as a gift to your children is a landfill that is full of too much trash on Guam, so thinking green during the holidays is important because it's also a great time when your family is all together and you can also teach everyone a lesson at the same time," she said.
Some tips she gives is to not rush in when making purchases, saying, "Plan what you were going to purchase and look for products made of recycle materials or less packaging, because that's really where we see a lot of waste coming from in the holidays is packaging from different toys and things like that."
She adds it's better to buy high quality items because they don't break as easily nor will they end up in the landfill so quickly. "When you're wrapping presents this Christmas see if you can find paper that is made of recycled material and if you can't find that kind of paper what we do is we use gift bags because they can be reused again and sometimes if you have a careful opener you can save the gift wrap and use it for others things, use it for art projects, use it for book covers," she said.
And don't forget about the parties. "When you 're going to your Christmas Day party make sure you bring your own containers for balutan because that really cuts down the amount of Styrofoam and Styrofoam is one of those things that will never ever go away," she said.
