With the holiday season approaching, below are ideas to consider in several different categories.
Future posts will go into detail on some of these areas.
In the meantime, I hope this prompts some ideas to make your holiday One Shade Greener.
Decorating & Entertaining
Lighting: We don’t need to avoid adding lights for the holiday but choose selectively how many you’ll add. Convert old lights over to LED and aim to leave your lights on less than 6 hours per day. When adding to the ambiance of the holiday, we can look for soy candles and the occasional fire.
Christmas Tree: Purchasing a live, cut tree and planting trees to replace is the greenest route if we choose to have a tree. We can use the branches we cut off from the tree to decorate in other places. When decorating, we should pass on using tinsel or fake snow (can’t compost).
Decorating: A quick tip for decorating is to leverage nature. This post goes into more detail. Some other quick tips include shopping secondhand for holiday décor, organizing a décor swap with family and friends, and leveraging craft decorating projects like creating tin can luminaries.
Entertaining: This topic was also covered in a prior post. A few headlines include, avoiding disposable tableware, paying special attention to the meal (foods and quantity), having a plan for how to recycle and compost waste, and other touches like eco-friendly party favors.
Holiday Giving
Holiday Cards: We can always consider sending e-cards instead of physical cards. However, for those who love to send cards during the season, continue. We can consider reducing the size of our mailing list, using recycled materials, and avoiding metallic finishes that can’t be recycled.
Buying Gifts: The greenest choice would be to purchase handmade gifts locally. We know that isn’t always going to be an option. Here are some other tips to keep in mind – bundle your shopping trips to reduce driving, take reusable bags to avoid the plastic, and look for items that are made of environmentally friendly materials and don’t have a lot of packaging.
Gift Ideas: There are many ways to make your gifts One Shade Greener. You could coordinate a toy swap in your community or shop secondhand to find something “new to you” and very gently used. A few other tips include making your gifts, giving experiences (local) rather than things, and avoid gifts with batteries that need replaced frequently and are challenging to recycle.
Gift Wrap: Selecting alternative materials (like cloth that can be reused) to wrap gifts and find natural materials from the outdoors to trim is the greener option. If we find an occasion where we need to use store bought paper, we can look for 100% recycled and recyclable. For packaging, avoid Styrofoam.
Your Turn
When do you begin shopping and decorating for the holidays?
Are there any areas above that are more difficult to change than others?
What area could you focus on this holiday season to become just one shade greener?