Gifts wrapped in silver and gold may be under your tree right now, but there's one color to keep in mind before throwing holiday waste in the trash: green.

All that holiday cheer can add up. Sarah McMullen usually has a few bags of post-Christmas day trash.

"Sometimes we try to save it for next year, but mostly it goes in the trash," McMullen said.

And that trash ends up in landfills explains Tommy Esqueda with Wake County Environmental Services.

"A lot of that material is paper products, plastic products that we can recycle," Esqueda said.

But going green is easier to wrap your head around this holiday season. Wake County will gladly recycle old electronics like TV's.

"The electronics contain a certain amount of heavy metals and these TV's that you see here in front of you contain lead glass. Those are products we would really rather not see in the landfill," Esqueda said.

Wake County's annual Holiday Wrap Up Recycling program will take everything from magazines to greeting cards, gift boxes and wrapping paper. It even takes Christmas trees, which are turned into mulch.

"We make that product available for our parks and greenways here around the county," Esqueda said.

By recycling, Esqueda said you can help landfills like the one in southern Wake County stay open longer. And even if you don't live in the county Esqueda said anybody can save space in landfills by using less and by looking ahead to 2009. He said save this year's gift bags, bows and ribbons and get in the habit of recycling all that you can.

"We'd like to make it a 365 day culture," Esqueda said.