(WFRV)- With Santa's 2024 journey around the globe in the books, left behind is valuable waste that can be re used by certain industries to make other products, more specifically, paper mills. Terry Webber is the Vice President of Industry Affairs for American Forest & Paper Association. He has been with the company for fourteen years, assuming a variety of roles and has worked in the industry on the policy side in places like Oregon and Washington D.C. Webber says that recycling is a valuable source of fiber for paper mills and that recycled fiber accounts for about half of their supply. To put a number to this, Webber says that paper mills recycle around forty six million tons of recycled fiber each year. This adds to the importance of recycling this waste properly. "The absolute biggest do is do recycle, if you don't get that material in the bin, there's no way it's going to have an opportunity to get recycled", explains Webber. "Recycling can be intimidating for people but it's really important to take the time to do it." There are many items from the holiday season that can and can not be recycled, some are easy and some take a little more research. Webber says an easy one is boxes, simply empty the box, flatten it and recycle it. It gets slightly more complicated when it comes to items like greeting cards with batteries, glitter and wrapping paper. "When you think about greeting cards, the ones that have batteries, those are really challenging and probably shouldn't go in the recycling bin unless you can remove the battery," says Webber. "Wrapping paper, a good rule of thumb to figure out whether or not that wrapping paper is paper or if its combined with foil is to scrunch it up in a ball." Webber goes on to say that if the wrapping paper stays in a tight ball, that paper is recyclable and if it does not, then it is made with some foils and is not recyclable. Bows and ribbons can not be re used and should be thrown in the trash. Items that have glitter should be thrown in the trash as well. Living in a digital age, all the information is able to be accessed online, all the time. Webber suggests to check your municipalities website for questions, as the counties usually do not hide this important information as they want you to follow them to make sure these items are heading to their proper place.