Between Thanksgiving and New Yr’s Day, the quantity of family rubbish in the USA will increase by 25 p.c, from 4 million tons to 5 million tons, together with present wrapping and product packaging. We additionally use extra electrical energy simply on vacation lights than some international locations use in a complete yr! All this waste is de facto pointless.
Listed here are twelve eco-friendly vacation ideas that will help you cut back your environmental footprint this vacation season.
1. Make Your Personal Wrapping Paper (or Go With out)
Earth911 estimates that roughly 4.6 million kilos of wrapping paper is produced within the U.S. every year, and that about 2.3 million pounds—about half of it—ends up in landfills. And on prime of all that, most wrapping paper and ribbon is produced in Asian sweatshops, and shipped from 1000’s of miles away, giving wrapping paper a reasonably heavy environmental footprint!
A standard mistake many individuals make across the holidays is placing all their wrapping paper, tissue, ribbons, and so on. into the recycling bin. Sadly, in case your wrapping paper is metallic, has foil or glitter decorations on it, or has a texture to it, it’s not recyclable. Together with it in your recycling bin with different paper merchandise might make a complete load unrecyclable.
What a disgrace a lot water, oil and bushes are wasted yearly solely to provide one thing that exists solely for use as soon as, torn off after which thrown within the rubbish. As a substitute of store-bought wrapping paper, get inventive and check out:
- white or brown craft paper (Have your children enhance it for a private contact!)
- previous maps
- the comics part of your native newspaper
- a reasonably scarf or bandana, furoshiki-style
- a helpful material merchandise that could be a present in and of itself
- recycled material baggage from Amazon or different retailers
You can even go with out wrapping your items altogether. A Small Footprint Family Facebook fan not too long ago advised me that at her house, she hides all of the unwrapped presents round the home, and holds a vacation scavenger hunt for the children to seek out them. What a enjoyable, intelligent, low-waste thought!
However when you should purchase wrapping paper, Wrappily affords pretty vacation wrapping papers constituted of 100% recyclable and compostable newsprint. It’s also possible to get vacation playing cards (and different playing cards, too!) constituted of 100% recycled paper at Paper Culture.
2. Purchase Vitality-Saving LED Vacation Lights
Due to know-how, now you can enhance your home with LED lights that use 80 percent less energy than conventional holiday lights, which can significantly cut back your vacation electrical energy invoice when you’re working a number of strands of lights for a number of hours a day. (Add a timer, and also you’ll save much more!)
Not solely do LED vacation lights price pennies to run in comparison with incandescent vacation lights, additionally they have the next benefits:
- LEDs are a lot cooler than incandescent lights, lowering the chance of fireside or burnt fingers. Not like incandescents, they get extra environment friendly as temperatures drop.
- LEDs are made with epoxy lenses, not glass, that are rather more immune to breakage. With care, LED vacation lights can final for as many as 50,000 hours of use. And when one bulb does exit, the remainder of the string stays lit!
- Not like incandescent vacation lights, you possibly can typically join as much as 25 strings of LED lights end-to-end with out overloading a wall socket. And since LEDs use a lot much less energy than filament lights, there are varieties that may be run on batteries or small photo voltaic panels, saving you much more cash.
In response to the U.S. Department of Energy, if everybody changed their standard vacation mild strings with LEDs, the power price financial savings can be $850 million every year, and 9.9 billion kilos of annual greenhouse gasoline emission can be prevented. The financial savings can be equal to the emissions from 940,000 autos!
LED lights are inexpensive and obtainable online and at many main retailers. And, when you put your lights on a timer, it can save you much more cash!
Why Are Lead and PVC Utilized in String Lights?
Each lead and PVC are utilized in virtually all string lights (LED and incandescent) to insulate the wiring, retard fires and reduce the cracking and disintegrating that comes with age. String lights may also comprise antimony, arsenic or cadmium as insulators and hearth retardants, too—all poisonous heavy metals you don’t wish to contact or inhale.
Whereas these toxins are unattainable to completely keep away from, you can discover much less poisonous string lights. Search for string lights which can be RoHS compliant and free from Prop 65 warning labels.
So as to be RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) compliant, a product has to have lower than 1000 ppm (.1%) of lead in it. RoHS compliant lights should even have low ranges of cadmium, mercury and phthalates. So though RoHS compliant lights will not be fully lead- and toxin-free, they often are a lot safer in comparison with different, non-RoHS manufacturers.
For those who can’t discover RoHS compliant, low-toxin lights, make sure you maintain your string lights away from kids and pets, put on gloves, and wash your fingers completely after putting in them.
3. Add Natural & Native Meals to Your Vacation Feast
Make your vacation feast much more vibrant by supporting local household farmers and meals producers who sustainably produce meat, greens and seasonal treats in your space.
An area, sustainably farmed roast or ham is a lot better for the setting than manufacturing facility farm meat produced 1,000 miles away. Not solely does native, natural meals style higher, however you’ll even be doing all of your half in your neighborhood and the planet too.
Here’s where to find an organic turkey or humane ham and local vegetables in your vacation dinner.
4. Get a Chemical-Free Tree
As individuals be taught extra about dwelling inexperienced and wholesome, demand is on the rise for Christmas bushes that aren’t coated in chemical compounds. Right here’s what you’ll want to know:
Stay Christmas Timber
Studies have shown that minimize or potted stay bushes are a a lot greener selection than a man-made tree. Dwelling Christmas bushes present wildlife habitat, protect soil, moderate floods and drought, filter air and sequester carbon whereas they develop, which takes 6-8 years. Tree farms additionally present native jobs and good livelihood in rural communities.
However sadly, some growers can use as much as 40 completely different pesticides, in addition to chemical colorants on their bushes! The excellent news is that there at the moment are plenty of tree-farms that promote pesticide-free bushes, so ask your native Christmas tree vendor, or search for an organic tree farm close to you.
The most eco-friendly vacation tree choice is a potted, native tree that you would be able to plant after the vacation season. You’ll find stay, potted Christmas bushes in any native nursery in your space. In California, New York, and the United Kingdom, you possibly can even lease a potted Christmas tree, and they’ll handle it for you between seasons!
If getting a potted tree isn’t doable, cut back your carbon footprint by buying a domestically grown minimize tree, and ensuring it will get mulched or in any other case recycled—fairly than put into the landfill—when the vacation is over.
Synthetic Christmas Timber
Synthetic bushes can final a few years if effectively cared for, which appears to make them a extra sustainable selection, however they do have some very vital drawbacks. For instance, you would need to maintain your plastic Christmas tree for at the very least 10 years for it to have the identical carbon affect as utilizing an actual tree every year.
Synthetic bushes additionally pose an enormous hazard to the setting, to staff and to shoppers. Plastic Christmas bushes are made largely of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a non-renewable petroleum product. As well as, massive quantities of fossil fuels are required to fabricate and transport the plastic bushes (normally from Asia), including extra greenhouse gases to the environment.
PVC additionally comprises phthalates, which accumulate in physique tissues, and are linked to liver, lung and reproductive organ injury in mammals. Poisonous heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tin are usually used within the manufacturing of PVC, and may also result in environmental and health-related issues together with nervous system injury, significantly in kids.
As a result of synthetic bushes are flammable, many firms additionally apply flame retardants to them, which might trigger reproductive toxicity, neurological toxicity, endocrine disruption, and most cancers. In actual fact, there are such a lot of toxins in synthetic Christmas bushes, that the labels warn you to keep away from inhaling or touching any mud that will fall from the branches!
Synthetic bushes can’t be recycled on the finish of their life, so that they should be landfilled or incinerated. Within the landfill, the non-biodegradable supplies don’t actually ever break down, whereas incineration causes plastics akin to PVC to launch dioxins and different carcinogens into the air.
So, when you do select a man-made tree, be sure you take excellent care of it so you need to use it for at the very least 10 years, and make sure you deal with it rigorously to keep away from being uncovered to its poisonous mud.
You may additionally take into account different bushes, like book trees, wine bottle trees, or trees made from ornaments or lights.
5. Recycle Your Christmas Tree
Every year, 10 million minimize Christmas bushes find yourself within the landfill, the place they produce methane, a potent greenhouse gasoline.
For those who can’t chip your tree into mulch, minimize it into firewood, use it in crafts, compost it, or feed it to your goats, you can nonetheless recycle your tree.
Over 4,000 U.S. cities alone provide packages to recycle your tree into mulch or wooden chips. Some cities even use your previous bushes to do essential environmental initiatives like streambank or dune stabilization. In some cities, you possibly can even donate your tree to the zoo to feed the animals there.
Go to the National Christmas Tree Association or Earth911 to discover a Christmas tree recycling program close to you.
6. Recycle Your Outdated Cellphone or Pill
Getting a brand new cellular phone or pill for the vacations? Unsure what to do with the previous one? Every year, 130 million cell telephones are thrown out, weighing roughly 65,000 tons. Recycling your previous cellphone prevents hazardous components like mercury, cadmium and lead from ending up in our landfills.
Now, you possibly can drop off that previous cellphone or pill at any Staples retailer, take it to your native e-waste recycling middle, ship it to BigSky Recycling, or presumably commerce it in together with your cellphone service or one of many many buyback programs on-line.
7. Offset Your Vacation Journey
For those who or your family members are touring greater than 100 miles this vacation season, attempt to cut back air journey at any time when doable, and take into account offsetting the fossil gasoline air pollution generated by your journey, irrespective of the way you journey. These firms might help you get bushes planted to cut back your affect.
- Terrapass – Supplies carbon offsets for flying, driving, and so on.
- CarbonFund – Supplies quite a lot of carbon offset initiatives to select from.
- Sustainable Travel – Supplies quite a lot of methods to offset carbon emissions
It’s also possible to cut back your air journey footprint by flying like a N.E.R.D. When reserving your flight, select:
- New. Newer plane just like the A320neo or Boeing 787-8 have 15% much less gasoline burn than older designs.
- Economic system. Extra seats, and fewer unfilled seats, means decrease gasoline burn per passenger.
- Common. Regional jets and really massive plane with 4 engines are gasoline intensive. Common, medium-sized jets are typically extra gasoline environment friendly.
- Direct. Fly direct, with out layovers, the place doable to cut back gasoline burn resulting from circuitous routes.
8. Donate Your Time or Cash to an Environmental Trigger
Get into the vacation spirit by volunteering! There are numerous methods to assist enhance your neighborhood—and the planet—from cleansing up an area river to serving to inside metropolis children expertise the outside for the primary time.
Organizations and charities all around the nation want your time and/or your cash to make a distinction, so you possibly can have an important affect for a small quantity of effort.
Listed here are my three favourite environmental charities to donate to throughout the vacation season:
- OneTreePlanted – One Tree Planted is a non-profit that allows people, companies and faculties to assist with reforestation initiatives all around the world. They use your donation to empower native communities to develop and plant the saplings wanted to restore forests after fires and floods, create jobs, construct communities, and defend habitat for wildlife.
- Charity:Water – charity: water is a non-profit group that brings clear and secure ingesting water to the 785 million individuals worldwide that lack primary entry to it. 100% of public donations go on to fund clear water initiatives.
- Savory Institute – The Savory Institute teaches Holistic Deliberate Grazing to farmers, ranchers, and pastoralist communities throughout the globe with a view to facilitate large-scale regeneration of the world’s prairies and grasslands by way of biomimicry and holistic administration.
9. Make Handcrafts & DIY Items
There are such a lot of methods to cut back your consumption affect when giving vacation items. DIY items could be as a lot enjoyable to make and provides as to obtain. There are tons of concepts on Pinterest, however you’re actually solely restricted by your creativeness.
Some do-it-yourself present concepts embrace:
10. Give Experiential Items
One of the vital memorable items to provide is the present of an expertise. By giving items that may be skilled, you possibly can reduce wrapping and purchasing, and nonetheless give them one thing they’ll always remember.
Something that enables your beloved to spend high quality time experiencing one thing enjoyable, new or attention-grabbing will make a present certain to be cherished for years to come back.
Some concepts for experiential items:
- tickets to a ball recreation, play or live performance
- a visit someplace attention-grabbing
- a yr of zoo or museum membership
- passes to an area theme or water-park
- classes, lessons or a workshop
- a bucket-list expertise, like sky-diving or whale watching
- a particular do-it-yourself meal, therapeutic massage or “spa day” with you
Experiential items are extremely private, and are sometimes greatest loved when shared between each the giver and the receiver, so you possibly can construct lasting reminiscences collectively.
11. Buy Eco-Pleasant & Regionally Made Items
For those who select to buy retail items, select merchandise that are available in minimal packaging, are constituted of sustainable supplies, and could be simply recycled. It’s also possible to select items that assist individuals stay extra sustainably, like a compost bin or a reusable water bottle.
Associated: 24 Unique Gifts for Gardeners
Store Native
Now greater than ever, it’s essential to help your native small companies and retailers by searching for items in your hometown. This helps your native Essential Road to outlive, and offers native jobs. For those who’re unsure what to get, buy present certificates from space retailers, eating places and meals purveyors.
At any time when you possibly can, attempt to consolidate journeys so you employ much less gasoline throughout your vacation purchasing.
Eco-Pleasant On-line Procuring
On-line purchasing reduces the period of time you spend driving your automobile, however the carbon footprint from transporting all these purchases could be excessive. As well as, the packaging could be an unlimited waste.
In response to a study by MIT that in contrast brick-and-mortar purchasing to on-line purchasing, shopping for on-line usually has a decrease carbon footprint than driving round—besides when internet buyers select 2-day or quicker supply.
At any time when doable, plan forward to keep away from 2-day or rush transport. Choosing a slower transport time provides the shipper time to schedule deliveries extra effectively. Attempt to consolidate shipments of a number of gadgets when you possibly can, and waive signature necessities (or use Amazon locker) to stop a number of supply makes an attempt.
There are numerous on-line retailers specializing in sustainable and handcrafted items, from arts & crafts to clothes to family items to wonderful jewellery, together with:
12. Stuff Stockings With Yummy, Pure Treats
Stocking stuffers are typically small, plastic trinkets that find yourself damaged, misplaced or within the rubbish by the tip of January. As a substitute, honor an old style custom and fill your stockings with yummy treats like dried fruit, nuts, clementines, sweet, and homemade holiday cookies.
How are you being inexperienced this vacation season?
We Want You a Peaceable Vacation and an Ample New Yr!
—The Small Footprint Household
This text was excerpted from my guide Sustainability Starts at Home – How to Save Money While Saving the Planet. For extra money-saving, planet-friendly ideas, decide up a replica at present!
Additionally featured on NPR’s Here and Now Show with Robin Young
