 Celebrate a ‘Green’ Christmas
by Catherine
Spelling
While Christmas is considered the most magical, wonderful
time of year, it’s also commonly criticized as the most
wasteful season. Throughout the Christmas season everyone
buys more, eats more and throws more away.
In the US alone more than 300,000 tons of Christmas
garbage is dumped into landfills over the holidays.
On top of pollution and global warming, this puts added
stress on our planet and makes our environment a little
less friendly to live in.
By making you Christmas even a little more environmentally
friendly, you’ll save some stress to the planet and
save yourself some money. The easiest way to celebrate
a ‘green’ Christmas, is to do less: buy less; decorate
less; use less.
Here are a few ways you can cut down on your holiday
consumption to help lighten the environmental load on
our planet.
• Christmas lights drain a lot of energy and can be
expensive. A single string can use up to 100 watts of
energy. Keeping your lights on for extended periods
of time can add more than $100 to your December hydro
bill. You can avoid all this spending by simply eliminating
lights from your Christmas display – or using fewer
of them! Replace your traditional bulbs with LED lights
to lessen the cost of your Christmas lighting, too.
• Shorten your Christmas list and only buy gifts for
people who are truly special to you. Rather than buying
your loved ones a gift, host
a party. Be the person who brings everyone together
and you’ll be at the top of everyone’s list.
• If you don’t want to throw a get-together, make donations
to environmental charities in your friends’ names or
‘buy’ them an acre of rainforest. The money you spend
goes towards the protection and maintenance of ecologically
significant areas.
• If you have to buy them something, make sure your
gift is environmentally friendly. Buy locally to lessen
the environmental impacts of manufacturing and shipping.
Avoid anything that is over packaged or causes waste
through its use. When you shop, take your own reusable
bag and try to do all of your shopping in one place
to avoid using too much fuel driving from place to place.
• Showing your holiday spirit with pretty packages and
decorations is a popular tradition. Be a trendsetter
and focus your decorations on reducing and reusing.
Give reusable bags or wrap a gift in another gift
like a t-shirt or scarf. Put fewer decorations up
and choose ones that are reusable and don’t require
power. Live decorations like evergreen boughs and holly
are also great because they add scent to your holiday
décor and can be composted after the holidays.
• You can also create less waste by making things yourself
and reusing your holiday trimmings. Make
your own wrapping paper and cards and make sure
to unwrap your gifts carefully so you can reuse the
paper. An even better way to save is to avoid wrapping
gifts in paper at all.
• Take care in storing your decorations so that they
survive year after year and you don’t have to throw
them out or buy new ones. If you have to get rid of
something, make an effort to recycle.
In the end, what costs both you and the environment
is consuming without conserving. By simply reducing
what you use over the holidays, even a little bit, you
can lessen the waste that is left over from Christmas
and help make our world a cleaner, healthier place to
live.
About the Author
Catherine Spelling absolutely loves spending Christmas
with family and friends. When she is not counting down
the days until Christmas, she writes for christmaslightsanddecorations.com
– an online resource for things relating to Christmas
and decorations, with information on decorations
for Christmas, pre
lit Christmas trees and more.
Catherine Spelling absolutely loves spending Christmas
with family and friends. When she is not counting down
the days until Christmas, she writes for christmaslightsanddecorations.com
– an online resource for things relating to Christmas
and decorations, with information on decorations
for Christmas, pre
lit Christmas trees and more.
Article Source: MyArticlePub.com
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