Holiday Recycling

  1. Christmas trees

    DSI collects real Christmas trees during the first two Mondays of January. They collect only one tree per household. Place the real tree on the curb near your garbage cart. Please call ahead for pickup to 952-469-2239.

String of holiday lights

Lights recycling

Don’t know what to do with those old or non-working holiday lights? Making the switch to energy efficient LED holiday lights? Recycle your old lights!

Residents can drop-off any unwanted holiday lights at Arrow Hardware at 670 Water Street South from December 26 through March 2021.

At any point during the year, you can bring lights to the Recycle Center at the Rice County Solid Waste Facility located at 3800 East 145th St., Dundas, MN 55019. Check their website for hours or call 507-332-6833.

Rice County Recycling Center

Green gifts

Before you go out shopping this holiday season, take a moment to consider going green.

Instead of buying low quality goods, which will be thrown away or used up quickly, buy high quality gifts which will last a long time, and therefore will require less resources to replace over and over again. This way your friends and family won’t have to worry about dealing with the hassle of a broken or used up gift down the line!

  1. Consider creating your own or buying handmade gifts for your loved ones. Locally made gifts often have traveled a shorter distance to arrive to you, which means they have used less fossil fuels!
  2. Reduce your waste and save money by using fabric or reusable bags to wrap your presents. Help yourself and the environment by avoiding throwing away tons of trash each Christmas by lowering the amount of trash you create!
  3. Thrifting is a great way to buy used goods and help reduce the amount of still functioning goods in landfills!

Pandemic-friendly ideas

For some pandemic friendly ideas as well as experiences for when we can be together in-person check out:

Sustainable shopping choices