From Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, household waste increases by more than 25%. Added food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons - it all adds up to an additional 1 million tons of waste a week to our landfills. Here are a few suggestions for being eco-friendly this holiday season:
Make Your Own Wrapping Paper
Most mass-produced wrapping paper you find in stores is not recyclable and ends up in landfills. Wrap presents with old maps, the comics section out of the newspaper, or use a scarf, attractive dish towel, bandana, or some other useful cloth item. Using some of your child’s artwork would be a great personal touch. If every family wrapped just three gifts this way, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.
Give Memories Instead of Stuff
Give the gift of an activity, such as tickets to a movie or museum, dinner at an organic restaurant, a massage or a day out at a spa. Rather than wrapping up a present, give a gift certificate for adult programs, like cooking lessons or basic photography. For the person who has everything but time, give a service like snow shoveling or curbside recycling.
Recycle Your Old Cell Phone
Getting a new cell phone for Christmas? Each year, 130 million cell phones are thrown out, weighing approximately 65,000 tons. Recycling your old phone prevents hazardous elements like mercury, cadmium and lead from ending up in our landfills. Now, you can drop off that old phone at Staples, Best Buy or other local electronics collection sites.
Add Organic and Local Foods to Your Holiday Feast
It’s estimated the ingredients for the average U.S. meal travel 1,200 miles by the time they are served. Choosing food products that are in season, and not flown in from a tropical climate, is better for the environment. Support local family farmers by seeking out winter farm markets, many of which move indoors in colder climates. Consider giving food as a gift. Food is consumable, doesn't take up space, and locally grown food does not require shipping or wasteful packaging.
Buy Energy-Saving Holiday Lights
LED (Light Emitting Diode) holiday lights use up to 95% less energy than larger, traditional holiday bulbs and last up to 100,000 hours when used indoors. Over a 30-day period, lighting 500 traditional holiday lights will cost you about $18.00 while the same number of LED lights costs only $0.19. As an added bonus, if one of the LED lights burns out, the rest of the strand will stay lit.
Use Reusable Bags
Headed out to the mall for some holiday shopping? Take along reusable shopping bags and you’ll help reduce the number of single-use, disposable bags.
Holiday Greetings Over the Phone or Internet
An estimated 2.6 billion holiday cards are sold each year in the United States, enough to fill a football field 10 stories high. If every family reduced their mailing list by just one card, the nation would save 50,000 cubic yards of paper. If the recipient has Internet access, consider sending electronic holiday cards this year.
