Many holiday items can be recycled or composted but foil means trash, says P.E.I. waste agency

By the time you read this, you might already be knee-deep in torn wrapping paper, demolished cardboard boxes and styrofoam whatnots from the Christmas morning frenzy. 

Those of you who packaged family gifts in reusable fabric sacks or pretty holiday gift bags are ahead of the game. You can just put those suckers back in a storage box, along with any sturdy bows and fabric ribbons, for re-use in 12 months. 

Some of you might have taken a cue from a Japanese custom called furoshiki and tied up your gifts in attractive fabric sheets that themselves are a present to receive. Or you might have given your friends and relatives experiences rather than things, and have relatively little waste to contend with. 

If you haven't… well, maybe next year.

In the meantime, here's a list of what to do with each kind of Rudolph refuse. You can also check out the extremely thorough Island Waste Management interactive sorting guide if you're wondering about something not on this list. There's an app called Recycle Coach you can download as well. 

Plain or coloured paper goes in the compost bin, unless it has plastic coating or foil designs or embossing on it. Then it's waste.

Greeting cards are compost unless they have plastic, foil, ribbons or other types of embellishment on the cards, in which case the entire card goes in the waste.  

If the greeting card has a battery to light up or play music, remove the battery and recycle it at a recycling collection location.

If they're shiny with a plastic coating, they're waste. (Or saveable for next year; see above.)

However, Island Waste Management says you can recycle gift bags made of brown paper with brown paper handles. They can go out on the next recycling day, with your corrugated cardboard or in blue bag number one (paper items).

Clean packaging of this type is recyclable, and can go out with corrugated cardboard or in a blue bag number one (paper items).

Styrofoam packaging forms and peanuts are waste and go into the black bin. Same for plastic packaging forms that don't have a recycling number on them. 

Pulp fibre packaging forms that look like the stuff that egg cartons are made of can go into blue bag number one.

Even though some shippers are now using biodegradable packing peanuts made from naturally derived starches like wheat and cornstarch, especially for electronics, if they look like plastic or styrofoam, they are still waste. This is because collection drivers and staff at IWMC's central compost facility can't distinguish them from conventional plastic ones.