TIME TO START TALKING TRASH.

Byline: Jenifer Hanrahan Daily News Staff Writer

Robert Lilienfeld has some pet peeves that will either make Angelenos feel terribly guilty or dismiss him entirely.

People who drive gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles a few blocks at a time, for instance. He can't stand that. Even worse, those who leave the car running while they dash into a store. Blasphemous!

Then there are those who buy impulsively, filling their closets with clutter that will someday end up in a landfill.

And one more thing: ``Bottled water drives me crazy,'' Lilienfeld said. ``There are very few places in the United States where any official would advise you to drink bottled water over tap water.''

It's not the mad attempt at status-grabbing that bothers him so much. It's the utterly unnecessary wasting of natural resources that sends him into a tizzy.

``Many people just don't understand,'' Lilienfeld said. ``If each of us would do a little bit, it would make an enormous difference.''

And this time of year, Lilienfeld feels as frantic about his message as last-minute Christmas shoppers.

Americans throw away 25 percent more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year's than any other time of the year, according to the ULS Report.

Sales fliers. Catalogs. Shopping bags. Greeting cards. Gift wrapping. Ribbons. Decorations. Leftover food from holiday fetes. Combined, it makes the nation's trash grow by an extra 1 million tons per week.

It's pure madness. It's enough to set a man on a mission to get Americans to conserve.

Lilienfeld, an environmental activist who hails from Michigan, and William Rathje, an Arizona anthropologist who studies garbage, are the authors of ``Use Less Stuff: Environmental Solutions for Who We Really Are'' (Ballantine Publishing Group; $12). The newly released book grew out of their nonprofit bimonthly newsletter called the ULS (Use Less Stuff) Report, which for five years has offered strategies for reducing consumption and conserving resources while saving money.

Their message is spreading, hitting home with at least 20,000 subscribers, including Mosa and Nancy Kaleel of Sherman Oaks.

Two years ago, the Kaleels were among the many guilty of being generous contributors to the American waste stream. It wasn't until they started recycling paper, plastic and glass that the couple took a good look at their garbage for the first time and noticed they were throwing away enormous amounts of food.

That's when they started planning their menus rather than haphazardly throwing items in a shopping cart and wondering why the broccoli always went bad.

Mosa held onto his '87 car, uses both sides of the paper at work and takes his own cup to Starbucks. Nancy donates old magazines to nursing homes and makes gifts for friends from furniture she finds at garage sales. She decorates chairs with old keys or bottle caps and weaves new seats from twine.

They took their name off of catalog mailing lists to reduce their junk mail. ``I definitely wanted to get away from being the ultimate consumer,'' said Mosa, 30. ``We've let ourselves become unconscious about our surroundings and our waste. We need to take responsibility for the affluence of our society.''

A state law passed in 1989 required every California city to reduce the amount of waste dumped into landfills by 25 percent by 1995 and 50 percent by 2000. It's spurred municipalities to institute recycling programs; even Christmas trees get turned into mulch now.

But that's not the entire answer, Lilienfeld said.

To really reduce our waste, we have to reduce consumption in the first place, he said.

``We're doing it backwards,'' Lilienfeld said. ``We're patting ourselves on the back for collecting as much waste as possible but in reality what we wanted to do was not create it in the first place. By worrying about packaging, we keep hiding the fact that we are using too much stuff.''

What is the main culprit filling up the landfills? Of the 210 million tons of trash Americans dispose of yearly, paper makes up the bulk of it - about 38 percent. That's followed by yard waste (13 percent), food (10 percent) and plastics (9 percent), according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Still, there are signs Americans are starting to catch on to the urgings of environmentalists, said Bob Dellinger, the EPA's director of municipal and industrial solid waste.

In 1960, Americans generated an average of 2.68 pounds of garbage per person each day. That number continued to climb, hitting a high of 4.5 pounds a day per person in 1990.

Then in 1996, the number dipped slightly to 4.3 pounds a day, the most recent statistic available.

Dellinger attributed the shift to two major factors: Consumers are making small changes, such as leaving grass clippings on their lawn and composting, and corporations, in an attempt to lower shipping costs, are using less material to package products.

Reduce, reuse, recycle - that's the mantra uttered by conservationists everywhere. Not only will you help save the earth, you stand to save money.

To help you get started, conservationists offered these tips:

Decking the halls

Buy outdoor light strands that are wired in parallel so that if one bulb blows out, the rest will keep shining. The smaller the bulb, the lower the wattage and the lower the energy use.Instead of Christmas cards, consider sending an e-mail greeting. There are dozens of Web sites that offer free, animated postcards you can personalize and send via e-mail. Try www.123greetings.com/Christmas, www.marlo.com/xmas/xmas.htm and pwww.bluemountain.com/eng/christmas/index.html.

Party time

For formal affairs, rent a gown or a tux or buy them from a secondhand shop.

Turn down the heat before guests arrive. You'll save energy, and the extra body heat of the guests will warm up the room.

Plan meals wisely and practice portion control to minimize waste. If you have leftovers, don't throw them away. Send food home with guests, or donate it to a food bank or church.

Shopping

Consolidate purchases into one bag rather than getting a new bag at each store. Better yet, bring your own bags.

Buy rechargeable batteries for electronic toys.

Donate unwanted gifts or toys the kids have outgrown to charity.

Drop off extra packing peanuts at mailing stores. Call the Plastic Loosefill Council's Peanut Hotline at [phone] for names of businesses that reuse them.

Plan what you need to buy in advance. Rather than just piling up presents under the tree, think about what your family and friends really want. Give a ticket to a concert, museum or sporting event. Sign them up for dancing, golf or foreign-language lessons.

Make your own gifts

Homemade gifts have added meaning.

Kreigh Hampel, a Burbank artist whose projects are made from recycled materials, scours junkyards to find materials for gifts he makes - frames decorated with braided vines along the borders, or furniture he's refinished and refashioned from discarded scraps.

``Junkyards create a huge palette of materials,'' he said.

You don't have to be an artist to make a great gift. Here are some additional ideas from the Center for a New American Dream, a Takoma Park, Md., nonprofit group that offers information on reducing consumption:

Make a personalized basket filled with homemade muffins, cookies or jam. Record interviews of parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles; ask them to discuss their memories of the person you plan to give the tape to, or compile a family history.

Put together a book of favorite family recipes.

Make a calendar with important family dates such as birthdays and anniversaries. Decorate the calendar with family photos.

If you have a talent or a skill, you can offer that, whether it's piano lessons, changing oil in a car, or refinishing furniture. Or simply give the gift of your time.

For the person you just don't know what to get? Hampel has an elderly neighbor who lives alone. He's having her over for a home-cooked dinner.

If the urgings of environmentalists or even the promise of saving money aren't enough to get you to cut down on consumption, these surprising facts may do the trick.

At least 28 billion pounds of food are wasted every year - more than 100 pounds per person in the United States.

If every family reduced gasoline consumption by one gallon - about 20 miles - it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million tons.

In 1981, the average household received 59 mail-order catalogs. By 1991, the number had increased 140 percent to 142. If every household canceled 10 mail-order catalogs, it would reduce trash by 3.5 pounds a year for every household.

Americans send 2.65 billion Christmas cards a year, enough to fill a football field 10 stories high.

If every family reused 2 feet of ribbon, it would conserve 38,000 miles of ribbon - enough to tie a bow around the entire planet.

Source: The ULS Report

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) up to your EYEBALLS in holiday trash?

Find out how to dig your way out

Photo illustration by Myung J. Chun/Daily News

(2) Burbank artist Kreigh Hampel, left, who specializes in using recycled materials, helps Jash Samimrad, 5, turn cereal boxes into a California condor during a craft session at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

(3) Noel Franco, 13, plays with a puppet made from recycled materials at the Natural History Museum.

Tina Gerson/Daily News

Box: What a waste! (See Text)