This time next week all that remains of Christmas Day will be leftovers in the fridge and rubbish.
Sounds pretty harsh, but the reality is Christmas produces piles of garbage that end up in the landfill.
Broken toys, wrapping paper, bottles, food scraps, the list goes on.
I don't want to be the Christmas Grinch. I love Christmas and no doubt we will have leftovers in the fridge. The chickens will get them and I've tried really hard to be mindful about what presents I have bought this year.
However, it's certain that like everybody else, there will be more recycling to do during the festive season.
For those of us who don't have the luxury of having our recycling picked up at the gate, it means a trip to a recycling station.
Not a problem. I usually go fortnightly to the Henderson Rd recycling station.
On Sunday the recycling was sorted and packed into the boot. Arriving at the gate just before noon I couldn't believe my eyes, the queue was out the gate.
Trailer loads of rubbish and boot loads of goodness knows what stretched out in front of me.
There must have been a lot of cleaning up going on before rellies arrived for Christmas.
The queue was at a standstill when I joined it, then this little car zoomed past the entire line on the wrong side of the driveway. I couldn't see where it ended up but I did see it leave as I was still sitting in line.
So it must have been to the recycling station because I could see the cars leaving the dump.
Linda Hall is assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today.
The problem was that people in the line who wanted to get to the recycling station were stuck behind people waiting to get into the dump.
People were also queuing up to get out of the dump.
It would have been helpful if someone from the recycling station asked drivers without trailers if they were recycling or dumpling.
They could have easily directed the traffic into the correct space while cars were queuing to get out of the dump.
After 25 minutes I made it in. There was just one other car in there.
Our population has grown a lot in the past few years, people are encouraged to recycle and reuse so how about the Hasting District Council thinks about reopening the Havelock North recycling station.
That move alone would take the pressure off the Henderson Rd site and therefore encourage more people to recycle.
