5 Eco-friendly Christmas tips for you

Wrap it right with Eco-friendly gift wraps

Our obsession with stationery is well fed with cute Christmas gift wrappers that we find around this time of the year. Those red and green gift wrappers in Christmas prints are completely drool-worthy. After all, who doesn’t love some sparkle and flair to the gifts they are giving away?

But for an Eco-friendly festive spirit, these wrappers are a complete no-no. Why?

Let’s start with a useless stat that will actually make sense. Every year about 120 million rolls of wrapping paper end up in the landfill. Now some more useless trivia. This waste is enough to wrap around the equator 9 times. These wrappers are almost never re-used and end up in our environment for hundreds of years. Plastic in our environment is not a festive thing at all. This leaves us with a pressing sense of ditching plastic wrapping paper for good.

 But, making your gift wrapping look sophisticated and pretty without exploiting the environment is a tough thing to pull off. But good news! There are many alternatives available. For example, you can try using reusable wrapping drawstring pouches made of natural biodegradable materials. These come in pretty Christmas prints and festive colors and unlike the traditional plastic gift wrappers that end up disturbing our environment, these bags do not add to the landfill.

Alternatively, you can try, wrapping gifts in a white sheet of paper and decorating it with ribbons made of old scarves or pine tree sprigs to make them look attractive.

Click here for more gift wrapping ideas

Kind cards

Let me start with stats again. A humongous 1.5 billion Christmas cards end up in the bin every year. These along with the gift wrapping papers are enough to cover London’s famous Big Ben, 2,60,000 times. This is not just useless trivia. It is a major landfill problem and by buying more cards, we are just contributing towards the problem.

This Christmas switch to e-cards. It is not much of an effort and the best part is, e-cards will likely stay in the inbox of your loved ones longer as compared to paper and plastic cards ending up in the trash or getting long lost inside a closet.

Sharing is saving

We got a new phrase this Christmas. Of course, sharing is caring but sharing is saving too. Saving on money, fuel, and the environment. Holidays and trips to home are on the top of the list for many around this time of the year. Trips mean shelling out a lot of money on travel and added pollution due to fuel.

This Christmas travel smart. Gather friends and family with the same route or destination as yours and opt for a carpool. Use public transport instead of a private car. Save yourself fuel by shopping online. When shopping offline, shop in bulk to save yourself frequent visits to shops.

Eco-friendly Christmas decor

Christmas is the most unsustainable time of the year. The household waste increases by 25% during the festive time and tree decor only contribute to these. Switching to eco-friendly and green decor is a great initiative towards green Christmas.

Ditch plastic and metal baubles to decorate pine trees. Use freshly baked gingerbread and star-shaped cookies and tie them up with a ribbon. In addition to being eco-friendly and edible, these fill the room with a delicious smell of baking. Alternatively, use red berries in place of red baubles. Use pine cones and old cards to make a wreath and tie an old scarf around to make it look exotic.

Look out for more DIY Eco-friendly Christmas decor here.

Conscious consumption in kitchen

Approximately 2 million turkeys, 74 million mince pies and 17.2 million Brussel sprouts are thrown away every Christmas (source: House beautiful). Conscious consumption doesn’t necessarily mean cutting down on the Christmas cheer by consuming less food. There are better ways to consume mindfully.

Buy meat or turkey from the local butcher of a market. They are organic and tastes better as compared to packaged frozen meat. Local meat is less energy intensively farmed. Even when buying other food items, look out for things that are seasonal, regional and organic. When buying something from the supermarket lookout for items with a fair trade label.

These are effortless ways you can make your Christmas green and eco-friendly.

Celebrate Sustainably!

Merry Christmas!!

EcoRight

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