Great Parks, Community Members Recycle Over 15,000 Pounds of Holiday Lights

From December 1, 2023 – February 1, 2024, residents turned in old holiday light sets at six Great Parks destinations.

(Hamilton County, Oh.) - The tangles of old, broken and worn-out holiday lights delivered to Great Parks for recycling this season weighed in at 15,130 pounds, or more than 7 tons of material that was diverted from landfills during the two-month program with Cohen Recycling. Cohen will present a check to Great Parks for $3,782.50 for the value of the recycled material at noon on Wednesday, April 3, in Winton Woods. 

Great Parks renews this conservation effort each year. This year’s total topped last year’s amount and is the second most in program history. Great Parks, the public and Cohen Recycling have now surpassed 40 tons of holiday lights recycled in the 11 years since the program launched in 2014.

“This recycling program continues to bring big sustainability benefits locally and even beyond our community,” said Stephanie Bacher, sustainability coordinator for Great Parks. “We are preserving natural spaces by keeping potentially hazardous materials out of area landfills, while also delivering a global impact by reducing the need to mine for new metals. Our actions have global impacts!”

From December 1, 2023 – February 1, 2024, residents turned in old holiday light sets at six Great Parks destinations throughout Hamilton County. Both LED and traditional light sets were accepted in specially marked bins.

At the end of the season, Great Parks turned the lights over to Cohen Recycling, which baled the light strands together, loaded them on a truck and used a heavy-duty scale to weigh the tons of material.