Tips and Resources for A Green Holiday

Greening Your Home For An Eco-Friendly Holiday

Tips for a Green and Eco-friendly Holiday

Green Your Holiday Season

The holiday season is here and Christmas is only a few days away. Decorations are going up, snow is falling down, and stores are constantly packed as people hunt for the perfect gifts for their loved ones. On top of that you have cookies to bake, vacations to plan, and cards to send. Needless to say, this time of year can be as stressful as it is merry and through all the holiday chaos, you may lose sight of the greener things in life. Fortunately, it is quite easy to have an eco-friendly holiday season, without any more added stress. Keep reading to find out how!

Cards
There are approximately 2.6 billion Christmas cards sold in the US every year. That’s enough to fill a landfill the size of a football field and 10 stories high! Before you rush out to the nearest Hallmark store to buy cards for all your friends, family, and co-workers, here are a few things to consider:

Send e-cards. These are sent via e-mail and waste no paper. Plus, some of them come with nice animations and sounds.
If you have a history of sending a family Christmas photo with your cards, create an online photo album on sites like Flickr or Shutterfly instead.
Be creative and make cards from items you already have.
If you absolutely must buy cards, look for ones made from recycled paper or those that donate a portion of proceeds to different organizations. If you are a member of a nature organization, or donate to different charities, they may even send you some free holiday cards in the mail (as well as gift tags and even some wrapping paper!). You may also be able to find some handmade cards at a local craft show or farmer’s market.
If you don’t intend to keep the cards that you receive, recycle them! You can also repurpose them by turning them into gift tags, decorations, or even turn old cards into new cards.

Gifts and Wrapping Paper

You may be tempted to rush out and buy the latest electronics, toys, and clothes on the market; especially if people requested them on their wish list. While it’s all well and good to buy people what they ask for, it doesn’t leave much room for surprises. Not to mention, a lot of the trendy choices out there aren’t exactly eco-friendly ones. Unfortunately, you can’t force people to go green, but you can green their gifts without them realizing it.

When wrapping gifts, use recycled materials or newspaper; don’t buy several new rolls of wrapping paper. You can also wrap gifts with other gifts, like blankets, sheets, towels, scarves, or table cloths.
Reuse bows and ribbons when you can and turn all that excess paper into craft projects.
To make it really interesting, skip the wrapping and hide the gifts around your house. Having a scavenger hunt will put a fun twist into those holiday surprises.
Whenever possible, don’t use wrapping paper at all. This particularly applies to large or odd shaped items, like bikes and large appliances.
Instead of giving packaged gifts, donate money to charity or simply offer some of your time by taking people out to events or do other activities together, like hiking, bowling, or taking a class.

You can also offer extra help around the home to friends or family. Maybe they need some repairs done, a garage cleaned out, or a room re-painted. Use your own talents and skills to do something special for them.

When it comes to actual gift buying, some people may be more open to the idea of green gifts than others. For those people, look for items with the Fair Trade label. Also keep an eye out for items made from organic, sustainable, or recycled/recyclable materials. These include things like recycled plastics, notebooks made with recycled paper, or materials like organic cotton and bamboo. You can also adopt an animal or plant some trees in their name.

For those that haven’t embraced the green life yet:

Look for electronics or appliances that have the Energy Star and EPEAT seals. You can also buy new or gently used items from sites like FlipSwap.com and Gazelle.com.
Buy local, not global. Look for items available from local artists and farmers. Also be sure to check out local thrift stores and flea markets.
Look for items that use a minimal amount of packaging, so there’s less waste and less to wrap!
To cut back on costs, make items instead of buying them. You can also set a spending budget, or do a gift exchange so everyone gets at least one gift.
If they need items that can be reused, buy them. For example: get rechargeable batteries and a charger, or a reusable lunch bag.

The Tree

The holiday tree is probably the biggest tradition when it comes to decorating for the holidays. Everyone wants the best tree, real or fake, and there’s so many ways to decorate them. You can use ornaments, lights, tinsel, or strings of popcorn, garland, and dried cranberries. Regardless of what you put on the tree (or under the tree), there are some things to consider about the tree itself.

Fake Trees
You may think that a fake tree is the best choice, because it can be reused again and again, for many years. Sure, this may save you costs and the lives of a lot of living trees, but aside from its reusability, the fake tree is actually the worst choice for a holiday tree.

Fake trees are primarily made of plastics and metals (including lead, which may leak from older trees). Once it’s time to dispose of the tree, it’s likely to remain in a landfill for a very long time. Fake trees cannot be replanted, recycled, or repurposed, and they do not biodegrade. In addition, many of them (nearly 85% used in the US) are made in China, which means you can expect a lot of pollution and waste to go into their production and shipping.

If you already own a fake tree, use it for as many years as you can, then start buying a real tree.

Real Trees
I am a person that feels very sad whenever I see a tree die, for any reason. You may wonder then, why would I support using real trees for the holidays? The reasons are simple. If you buy a tree from a tree farm, the people who work at that farm will plant new seeds, which means any tree that is cut down will be replaced. If you buy a tree from the garden section of a store, those are generally potted trees and can be transplanted outside once the holiday season is over.

Now, if you don’t get a potted tree, you’ll have to dispose of the tree once January hits. This is another bonus, because trees are biodegradable and there are many uses for them. You can cut off their branches and use them for crafts or trailing pine decorations. You can cut up the trunk and use it to make furniture or nifty wooden toys and decorations. And you can put the scraps through a wood chipper and use that as part of compost, mulch, or as firewood. In other words, every part of a real tree can be recycled and repurposed into something else, the only limit is your imagination. Not to mention that conifers (needle-like trees) are great at trapping carbon dioxide and will provide fresh air to your home!

The only down side is some farms use pesticides on their trees, so you need to watch out for that. And sometimes needles can be a lot of work to clean up (if your tree tends to shed a lot). Other than that, there really is no other issue with real trees. However, if you want to recycle them, do a search on Earth911.com. That site provides information on where to recycle trees, Christmas lights, wrapping paper, and more in your area. Also, please note that if you intend to recycle your tree, do not use tinsel or flock as part of the decoration because the tree will most likely not be accepted if it’s covered with that stuff.

Here are a few interesting statistics on Christmas trees:

Tree farms plant an average of 2,000 trees per acre!
Approximately 18 people can get their daily oxygen requirement from one acre of those trees.
It takes 10 years for one of these trees to grow and mature enough to be cut.
Over 130,000 fake trees were imported from China in 2006.

To find real trees in your area, check out the National Christmas Tree Association website. You should also look at the Green Promise website, which lists organic tree farms in 22 states!
Decorations and Lights

Now that I’ve talked about the Christmas tree, let’s move on to the next step: decorating! We all have them: the boxes in the attic filled with ornaments, table decorations, and tangled bundles of lights. While it may be tempting to cover every inch of your tree with ornaments and make the outside of your house look brighter than the sun, those aren’t exactly the best choices for the environment. As far as decorations go, your best option is to simplify things.

First of all, ditch those old strands of lights. Traditional lights consume a lot of energy, will cost you a pretty penny, and they don’t last very long (ever notice how one bad bulb will make the entire strand not work?). Go to Earth911.com to find out where you can recycle them in your area.

However, if you really want to go green, then buy some solar-powered LED lights. Hang these on the outside of your home and the sun will take care of the rest, which will cut down your electric bill even further.

Here’s an interesting fact for you:

The US Department of Energy estimated that if all Americans replaced their traditional Christmas lights with new LED strands, it would save over 2 billion kilowatt hours of energy for the entire month of December. That’s enough to power 200,000 US homes for a year!

Now as for decorations, natural and old-school are the way to go. Instead of hanging plastic wreaths, make your own from holly, pine branches, pine cones, or even a coat hanger and strips of fabric. Instead of putting up fake garland, string up some popcorn, cranberries or flowers. Make ornaments out of paper, fabric, recyclables, old family items, objects found in nature, or any craft items you can find. You can even make them out of sugar and gingerbread cookie cutouts!

Seeds and seasonal fruits can also make good table or shelf decorations and they can be eaten, composted, or planted afterwards. If you plan to buy ornaments, buy local. Visit farmers markets or local craft shops. Thrift stores will also have ornaments available.

Oh, and in regards to those inflatable yard decorations, like Santa or a giant snow globe with moving parts, do not use those. There is absolutely nothing eco-friendly about them.

That’s it for tips on going green for the holidays. While it may be a bit late to do most of them now, this article should help you get a jump on going green for Christmas next year. And as always, here are a few more sites worth checking out:

Earth 911: Green Your Holidays

EPA: Winter and Holiday Tips

Greenopolis: Go Green This Christmas with Recycled Decorations

Planet Green: Green Holidays

Planet Green: Further Reading on Green Holidays

The Nature Conservancy: Green Gift Monday