Christmas eve is joyous for each of us and we celebrate this event each year with great decorations and parties. If you are eco-conscious, you would be looking for eco-friendly ways to have a Christmas party.
No, I am not telling you to give up decorations, trees and gifts, we can do that, but all I am asking you is to do it in an eco-friendly manner. Let’s make a change this year. Small changes in our actions can help in reducing the environmental footprint during the festive break.
Rent a Christmas Tree
If you are looking for the best eco-friendly Christmas tree option, a real Christmas tree is the best choice. Real Christmas trees are much more sustainable than artificial Christmas trees. If you opt for other alternatives, a vast number of real Christmas trees will be dumped within January.
After Christmas, you can look for drop-off points in your area where your old trees will be recycled through choppings for local parks and woodland areas. You can also take it to your regional dump to add it with the other green waste or chop it up and stack the wood in your garden to create a habitat for the birds.
LED Christmas Lights
When it comes to eco-friendly Christmas decorations, LED lights are far better than traditional twinkling incandescent lights because they save up to 80% energy. To demonstrate: if every UK household used LEDs over incandescent lights, they could save more than £11 million and 29,000 tonnes of CO2 throughout the day.
Use Eco-friendly Glitter
The use of glitter makes the scenario more attractive and appreciable to the guests. However, toxic glitters cause harm to your environment and earth. Don’t get me wrong; I am not asking you to give up on glitters.
You can use plant-based glitters to prevent damages to the environment. This works the same as other glitters and enriches the beauty.
Wrap Gifts with Recycled Paper
Many of us use last year’s recycling paper but do not realize if it’s recyclable or not. Materials such as foil, glitter or plastic are non-recyclable. You can run a scrunch test to know if the wrapping paper is recyclable.
Scrunch up the paper in your hands and then let it go. If the paper stays scrunched up, it can be recycled, but if it unfolds by its own accord, it is more likely that the materials contain non-recyclable elements.
Buy Certified Green or Plastic Free Gifts
Good intentions can be useless if you don’t know what we are adding to our shopping baskets. Third-party certification is the best way to determine if a product is eco-friendly. Look out for respected ego logos, scientific certifications, green marks or something that assures you it’s safe.
Wrap Gifts with Fabric
If you cannot manage recyclable paper to wrap your Christmas gifts, wrap them with fabric that can be reused again and again.
Christmas Cards
In the present day, most of us don’t use a Christmas card. However, there is a way of writing Christmas cards without costing the earth. Opt for cards with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) marks.
This mark guarantees that the paper has been produced sustainably and ethically. After Christmas is over, recycle or compost your cards or leave them for decorating next year’s Christmas eve.
Reduce Food Wastage
Most of us are pretty creative with leftovers over the year, but when it comes to Christmas, people seem to be wasteful during Christmas. One option is to buy less, but this gets challenging when the guests are staying.
A good alternative is the food waste apps. These apps connect you to the people in need in your area. You make a list of what’s available, send a snap and share your location with other app users.
Reuse Everything
Throughout Christmas, reuse everything. Think if you can reuse an item before you bin it. To illustrate: you can use the tubes or crackers for Christmas cracker bunting.
Conclusion
Small steps from us can mean a lot to the environment. Avoid wastage and pollution during Christmas. Fireworks are a part of Christmas and it amazes us all. But this also causes harm to our environment. As I have said earlier, you need to give up on nothing. You can use crackers, but I am asking you to opt for eco-friendly crackers to avoid leaving a mark on the environment.
