YOUNGSTOWN — Plastic water bottles, K-cup pods, toilet paper rolls — it may sound like a list of useless, single-use trash. But in the hands of creative children, refuse never looked so good, or festive.

Children in Mahoning County schools were challenged by the Green Team of the Mahoning County Solid Waste Management District to design and create Christmas ornaments from items that might have just been thrown away.

“What the Green Team wants to do is reduce, reuse and then recycle. And all of the ornaments are made from reused material. We’re known as a throw-away society because when you’re done with something you just throw it away,” said Peg Flynn, Green Team educator.

“But this instills in the children the idea of, ‘what else can I do with this?’ And they made great ornaments. The parents and the kids are very creative.”

Students from Holy Family School in Poland brought the ornaments Thursday to the Mahoning County commissioners meeting, where they hung them on two Christmas trees in the hearing room in the basement of the Mahoning County Courthouse.

The activity is an easy one for parents and children to replicate at home, Flynn said.

To make his ornament, Holy Family fourth-grader Aiden Perry took a used light bulb.

“It was burnt out so we used glue to cover it and glitter,” Aiden said.

Instead of being stuffed in a garbage bag and hauled to a dump to be smashed into bits of glass and filaments, the ornament will hang on a tree and be packed away in a box of Christmas decorations ready to hang on the tree next year, Flynn said.

Johnny Gentile and Osiron Talbott, both in the fourth grade, said so many plastic water bottles end up in the landfill instead of being recycled, they wanted to figure out how to reuse one.

Osiron used heat, under parental supervision, to melt parts of the bottle into an icicle ornament; Johnny used the bottle to build a Christmas tree, wrapping it in green netting and attaching a bit of wood from his backyard to make a tree trunk.

K-cup pods, the single-use pod with ground coffee beans used to make a cup of coffee in a Keurig before being disposed of, interested sixth-grader Abigail Markey. She used the upside down cup as the “cafe” centered on a platform to be suspended with string from the tree.

Abigail said she knows a lot of K-cups are thrown in the garbage. Reusable ones are available.

Flynn said the Green Team offers lessons for students in Mahoning County schools about reducing, reusing and recycling. Call 330-740-2060 for more information.

To further “green” your holiday, consider reusable wrapping paper, gifts of experiences such as museum or zoo passes and use reusable totes for holiday shopping.

If you use traditional wrapping paper, consider saving it sans ribbons and bows, and greeting cards, and turn it into the solid waste district’s wrapping paper drive Dec. 26 to Jan. 15, at recycling drop-off sites.

Last year, the district collected 5,000 pounds of it. Christmas trees will be collected from designated recycling centers from Dec. 26 to Jan. 31. Last year, the district collected 60,600 pounds of Christmas trees. The trees are donated to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for use in wildlife habitat projects.