Shiny, Happy Recycled Holiday Lights: What To Do With Your Old Strands Once They've Kicked The Bucket!

Just last year, I bought 8 new strands of white LED lights for the holiday season and happily decorated my halls with the energy saving twinklers. I'm a firm believer in the power that a few well placed lights have to transform an entire home into a festive wonderland, so I went a little nutty carefully tacking and adorning...in fact, I decided that after all of that effort, I would just leave them up year round.

Just so we're clear -- I'm not a baby daddy to a litter of kidlets, I don't have a makeshift dead vehicle junk yard behind my house, and I don't own pit bulls or a Twinkie fryolater. Some might think that leaving Christmas lights up for the entire year is a...ahem...a white trash thing to do, but since they're eco-friendly, I justified that it would be a wise interior decorating move.

Everything was going fine, and then just two or so months later, two partial strands dropped dead. I tried to tweak them every which way that I could, to no avail. Hey! They were even manufactured by a "reputable company!"

If you are in the same boat as me...a little perplexed as to how to properly recycle holiday lights that refuse to be fixed, then you might consider participating in the new program that HolidayLEDs.com just launched. While you will have to go to the expense of shipping them to their processing facility, that's where the buck stops...in fact, the online retailer will even offer a 15% off coupon for any purchase in their store as a gesture of thanks.

Once they receive your parcel, their website explains: "The lights will be processed and any material that cannot be recycled (i.e. loose bulbs) will be discarded. Once we have collected a substantial number of sets, we take them to a 3rd party recycling facility located in Jackson, MI. The recycling company puts the lights through a commercial shredder, which chops the lights up into little pieces. The pieces are then further processed and sorted into the various components that make up the lights (pvc, glass, copper.) The materials are separated and transported to a region center for further processing. In some cases, the pvc cannot be recycled."

Okay, so the process may not yet be perfect, but it's certainly better than chucking them in the garbage. If you are intrigued and already reaching for a cardboard box, here's their address so you can make it a done deal:  HolidayLEDs.com, Attn: Recycling Program, 118 Rosehill Dr., Suite 1, Jackson, MI 49202  In the meantime, does anyone out there have other ideas regarding how to repurpose dead holiday lights?