The days following Christmas are difficult for many people.

Some have celebrated the season for the first time without a loved one being present.

Some are facing enormous bills generated by too lavish spending.

Some just go into a funk; it’s a seasonal thing.

On a more mundane level, those days are also difficult for the people who collect — and sometimes recycle — the detritus of the holiday.

A walk or drive through any neighborhood exposes the tremendous amount of material that gets discarded after Christmas.

While these piles of trash occasionally contain items not even associated with the holiday — furniture, worn out appliances, etc. — they are most often the accumulation of things left over specifically from the extravagance of holiday gifting.

Perhaps the most cumbersome and annoying items left for the collectors are the multitude of boxes which contained all those things added to the household holdings.

Some people who place their items on the curb awaiting pickup actually break down the boxes, flattening them, making it easier to accommodate them in the trucks which quickly fill up. Doing so also makes it easier on those loading the truck because they can manipulate broken-down boxes more easily.

It is regrettable all those boxes are being relegated to the trash heap, to the landfill, when they could be flattened and returned for recycling.

Cardboard is about the only item currently being recycled that is producing a profit for the recyclers.

Not confined to the holiday seasons are typically items which haulers will not collect, at least not the private haulers. These items consist of electronic items such as TVs, microwaves and large furniture items such as sofas, mattresses and bedsprings. Yet these items are routinely left with other trash, perhaps in the vain hope they will be hauled away anyhow.

Fortunately, many neighborhoods in Clark County (perhaps all) get visited by “pickers,” those individuals who roam the neighborhoods, usually either just before the scheduled trash collection time or perhaps the night before (when many people set out their items).

These pickers perform a valuable service in many ways. Not only do they collect items which may still have useful life and sell or recycle them, they also remove items from the waste stream that would otherwise be relegated to a landfill somewhere.

It is not unusual to find the trucks or trailers of the pickers loaded with what appear to be perfectly good toys, including bicycles, tricycles, cozy cars and scooters. So many usable toys get discarded following Christmas that could make many ungifted children quite happy.

The tragedy here is that, instead of the owner of the items attempting to find some outlet where these useful items could be donated, and possibly be given free to someone who might use them, those owners find it more convenient to cast them out.

The pickers will likely re-insert them into the stream, but at some cost.

This is to be expected, but minimal effort on the part of owners would be a welcome adjunct to the waste problem.

The point is Americans are a waste-oriented society, not yet attuned to the vast possibilities of recycling and re-purposing.

Someday that may change and someday it may be necessary to begin mining our landfills.

Chuck Witt is a retired architect and a lifelong resident of Winchester. He can be reached at chuck740@bellsouth.net.