As we enter the holiday season, you may be wondering how to reduce your impact and still enjoy all of your favorite traditions while also having a sustainable holiday season. But have no fear! You can make plenty of wonderful sustainable Christmas memories and have a lower environmental impact.
From DIY wrapping paper to LED Christmas lights, we’ve gathered up some of our favorite eco friendly holiday tips to help you stress less about your Christmas footprint and focus on the important stuff, like making memories with your loved ones!
DREAMING OF A GREEN HOLIDAY? Here ARE 15 SUSTAINABLE HOLIDAY TIPS FOR AN ECO-FRIENDLY HOLIDAY
1. Use Sustainable Holiday Gift Wrap
What looks beautiful under your tree is decidedly less so elsewhere. Most mass-produced wrapping paper and gift bags are printed using unsustainable inks and coated with shiny foils — which are not recyclable. Get creative and wrap gifts with materials that you have around the house, like old maps, comics, or paper shopping bags. You can also use any pretty, clean fabric like scarves, bandannas, or dish towels for a reusable wrapping. Create your own bows from strips of colorful paper and accessorize with twine, pressed leaves, and pinecones.
2. Prepare an Eco Friendly Feast
While preparing all of your favorite holiday dishes, try to support local farmers that grow sustainable meat and produce.
Not only will fresh, local ingredients lend an extra vibrancy to your meals, the food will taste better, too. As a bonus, you’ll be keeping your dollars in the local community, and supporting businesses that are still recovering from COVID-related economic shutdowns. Finally, a local, sustainably farmed roast or ham is generally much better for the environment than factory farm meat grown 1,000 miles away.
3. Get a Real Tree
Why? Real Christmas trees are more environmentally friendly than fake ones, which are made from plastic that will take hundreds of years to break down. But don’t get just any tree: some growers use up to 40 different pesticides and even add chemical colorants! Ask your local Christmas tree grower about their practices or search for a sustainable farm near you. Besides using less pesticides, a sustainable farm will plant more trees than they cut down each year. And those that they do harvest will be selectively cut in patches to maintain healthy forests.
4. Switch to LED Holiday Lights
While Christmas lights don’t use as much electricity as other things, switching to LED lights can save you around $50 on your holiday season energy bills because they use 90% less energy. Still not convinced? LEDs release very little heat and last about 200,000 hours, so you won’t have to replace them for a long time. And according to one study by the US DOE, if everyone in the US replaced their conventional string lights with LEDs, it would save about 2 billion kWh of electricity each month.
5. Give Sustainable Christmas Gifts
Keep your holiday footprint small by purchasing locally crafted gifts from small businesses. And if you can’t find everything on your list close to home, check out our eco-friendly holiday gift guide for plenty of great ideas! Everything on the list is produced by our partners, which means that anything you purchase will plant a tree! And from awesome tree-inspired apparel to the smoothest bourbon and beautifully produced sustainable headphones, there’s sure to be something for everyone on your list.
6. Make Sustainable Christmas Decorations
Get creative and use things that you have around the house to create your own unique, adorable Christmas decorations. This can be extra special, for example, if you use items from a deceased loved one to create a memento ornament that will remind you of all the beautiful Christmas memories you once shared. It’s also a great project to keep kids busy when they’re on break from school, or a crafting party with your friends and family!
7. Send a Tree Card!
As the holidays draw near, many wish to send a card to commemorate the season. But as appreciated as they are, many cards get thrown away once the holidays are over. The solution? Send an eco friendly holiday greeting card that’s made from recycled or recyclable paper — or, choose from one of our several e-card options to go zero waste and plant a tree to boot!
8. Gift an Experience they can look forward to
Gift something that can be enjoyed in the future, like tickets to a rescheduled game, comedy show, play, or concert, a fun day trip, a museum membership, guitar lessons, or even a gift card to a favorite local restaurant or business. You’ll be supporting a local business and giving your recipient something to look forward to!
9. Handcraft Some Awesome DIY Gifts
With supply chain issues looming large, try creating a gift basket filled with homemade body care products like soaps, lotions, bath bombs, and lip glosses — or one filled with holiday cookies, infused liquors or extracts, fudge, spiced nuts, and more. Add some special touches like homemade ornaments, a favorite bottle of wine, or a book you loved this year, and it’s bound to please!