My family likes to light up the holidays. I mean literally light them up. Instead of using harsh overhead lights, we illuminate our evenings with strings of LED lights that are the color of the closest holiday. Valentine’s Day red, St. Patrick’s Day green, Halloween yellow, Thanksgiving orange… even white lights all summer long.
I really like the subtle lights at night, but it bugs me that these lights have a limited lifespan. In a world where so much of what we purchase is manufactured with “planned obsolescence” in mind, these lights only last for a few years. Once upon a time, you had to just throw the lights away and start again. At Cleveland Metroparks Zoo we wanted to offer a new, more environmentally-friendly way to dispose holiday lights.
For the last two years, we have conducted a program called Lights for Lions. From November through January, we offer the opportunity for you to bring your old or broken light strings to the Zoo. We take those strings and turn them over to our recycling partner, Demilta Iron and Recycling Company in Willoughby, OH. Demilta provides us cash in exchange for those lights and they then recycle the lights to earn revenue which means the light strings do not end up in the landfill and a local business is supported.
But that’s not the best part! We then take those funds from Demilta and use them to support our lion conservation partner, Ruaha Carnivore Project in Tanzania. Not only is there a sustainable business portion of this effort, there is a real conservation impact through one of our closest and most trusted conservation partners. While our program is really just getting started, last year alone we were able to generate over $500 for lion conservation AND keep 1.7 TONS of holiday lights and electrical cords out of the landfill, all because the people of Northeast Ohio care about the environment.
Last week I recycled a string of orange lights that we’ve been using each Halloween for years. I’d replaced bulbs and fuses over the seasons, but string finally just stopped working. The recycling was a simple process (a lot simpler than trying to find the burned out bulb). I took them to the Zoo and put them in the Lights for Lions container at the main entrance. That string by itself is not worth a lot of money, but it’s good to keep it out of the waste stream and there’s strength in numbers. We began talking about Lights for Lions this week and I’m hopeful that people will bring their lights with them when they come out to see Wild Winter Lights or even during a daytime visit throughout the winter season. We’re also partnering with the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District and the lights that get recycled there will be part of this program as well!
Conservation doesn’t have to always be about what you can’t do. Sometimes it’s finding the opportunity that you can do. Visit Cleveland Metroparks Zoo’s Make a Difference page to find out about more things you can do to make the world a better place.
~Dr. Chris Kuhar, Executive Director of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo