Last Updated on 18/07/2022
Do you fancy having a green Christmas this year? Here are some ideas to help you do just that…
- Buy a real Christmas tree – artificial trees are often made of non-recycled plastics and have travelled a long way to reach the UK. Who knows where they’ve come from and whether the labour used were treated well. Not just that, real trees remove carbon whilst growing and can even be used next year (if you’ve bought one with roots). Alternatively, many garden centres and councils offer a recycling service for old trees. Bear in mind that only 10% of the 6 million or so Christmas trees are recycled, with millions going into landfill which is a wasted biomass opportunity.
- Send an e-card or buy charity recycled cards – saves on the carbon, and helps a worthy cause if proceeds go to charity.
- Compost your food peelings – break down your vegetable waste into valuable nutrients for your garden plants.
- Donate all your old clothes locally – remember that someone less fortunate would value your old dress or jacket. Please don’t throw them away.
- Purchase locally and organic turkeys are best! Support your local farmers and independent retailers to help your local community and reducing carbon footprint. And try buying an organic turkey to ensure it was reared humanely. And try to avoid buying all the vegetables in plastic packaging – buy loose or if you have to buy packaging, make sure its recycled packaging.
- Turn off the Tree lights when not needed – tree lights left on for 10 hours a day throughout the Christmas period produce enough CO2 to inflate 12 balloons. So try to turn them off if not needed.
- Use less packaging – whether it’s shopping bags or gift packaging, there is far too much wasted plastic packaging around. Try to avoid gifts with excessive packaging and use cotton eco shopping bags.
- Buy British and local gifts – help British manufacturers and cut the carbon footprint (think of all that energy used to ship products from China!). And try to buy gifts which will last and that don’t rely on disposable parts such as batteries. Or consider solar-powered products. And what about buying an experience rather than a physical gift? Something like cinema tickets, animal sponsorship, gift tokens. Just not things which will be discarded on December 26th.
- Recycle all your discarded festive waste – remember to take all discarded bottles and card to your local recycling bank. You will be amazed how much waste you generate over the Christmas period.
- Buy a woolly Christmas jumper and turn the heating down – OK so if you do receive a completely untrendy jumper for Christmas, wear it and turn down the thermostat in your home by 1 degree Celsius. You will be saving heating costs and reducing your carbon footprint. If you leave the curtains closed this will also help to insulate the house.
- Wrap up presents using recycled paper – avoid spending lots of money on virgin Christmas wrapping paper. Why not use newspaper or last year’s excess paper instead? Or recycled brown paper perhaps?
- Use the appropriate size saucepans – Don’t heat more water than you need else you will be wasting energy. And only boil the kettle with the amount of water you need.
We hope these ideas are of help – Have a wonderful Christmas, and remember our Christmas offer of 5% off all eco-friendly products for sale on GreenBuying.co.uk. Simply type “XMAS5” into the checkout discount field to enjoy the savings. Offer ends at 5pm on December 24th.