December 26th is Boxing Day in many countries, including Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand. While Boxing Day has nothing to do with actual boxes (or punching anyone for that matter), there is a way for Americans to participate in Boxing Day this year in a most unusual way but which has everything to do with boxes.
U-Haul, a leading retailer of moving and storage boxes and packing supplies in North America, makes it easy to go “green” this season with its Take a Box/Leave a Box Program and the U-Haul Box Exchange, both of which are geared toward helping customers save money while protecting the environment.
You’ll find Take a Box/Leave a Box displays at U-Haul facilities throughout North America. (You can use this link to find a U-Haul location near you.) The program enables customers to return their reusable boxes and allow other customers to take them as needed — FREE.
So after unwrapping presents this Christmas, instead of throwing your reusable boxes into the recycle bin, now you can drop them off at the nearest U-Haul location and allow another family to reuse the box, free of charge.
Here are some other ways to get rid of boxes on Boxing Day (or beyond) without throwing them out:
* Burn after using
We find that cardboard boxes make great fire-starters in our fireplace. You have to be careful, though, when burning boxes, because they can flare up quite large and you don’t want to leave that kind of fire (or any for that matter) unattended.
* Take back to a UPS Store
While neither the UPS nor the Mail Boxes Etc. corporate website lists that these storefronts will take boxes off of your hands, I know that my local locations do just that. In fact, if you plug in “cardboard recycling” into Earth 911, chances are a UPS Store will come up in the results.
* Give them away on Freecycle or Craigslist
I’ve found that whenever I’ve got boxes to give away and I post an “offer” listing on my local Freecycle, RecycleIt or Craigslist board, these boxes gets snapped up right away. I guess people can always use boxes.
* Use them for after-holiday storage
As I wrote in an earlier this post this week about frugal storage ideas, you can always use the boxes that this year’s gifts came in to store for next year.
READ LEAH ON HOME GOES STRONG
Another option: Give them to a friend with cats, who love sleeping in them. (My house is decorated in early feline style…)
A great frugal alternative to spending on some fancy-schmancy cat bed that will more than likely be completely ignored.
Did you mean December 26 instead of January 26?
Otherwise great ideas for what to do with boxes.
A heads-up about burning cardboard: food boxes, like pizza boxes, may contain dangerous chemicals. Here’s some info from Science Daily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071128113022.htm
[...] to Comments Back in December I wrote about a way that U-Haul was tying into Boxing Day with its “take a box/leave a box” program. The idea was to let people recycle moving boxes and keep them out of the waste [...]