Your Green Review

You’ve got your gifts, Christmas is almost here and you’re looking for ways to reduce waste, increase efficiency and save some cash in the last few pre-holiday weeks.  It’s easier than you might think and YGR is here to help from shipping and wrapping to recycling and composting!

Shipping:

• Ship USPS using their C2C (cradle to cradle) certified shipping materials
• Reuse old shoe boxes and packaging to ship instead of grabbing new boxes
• Instead of packaging with Styrofoam peanuts or bubble wrap use the batting from old pillows or stuffed animals, ripped up news papers or other discard paper.

Gift Wrap

• More than 8,000 tons of wrapping paper will be used on presents (using the equivalent of 50,000 trees) this year. Do your part to reduce the amount of scrapped paper and use the funnies, calendars, wallpaper, old maps or reuse gift wrap instead of new.
• If you do plan to use gift wrap, check out sustainable gift wrap.
• Cut out pictures from last years greeting cards and use as holiday tags this year.
• Use wrapping alternatives like purses, backpacks or wallets for little boys and girls, jewelry boxes, candy tins and wine sleeves for adults.
• Gift bags are not generally recyclable (mostly due to plastic, metal or glitter accents) so consider using reusable bags/purses, pillow cases tied at the ends with ribbon, or make your own reusable gift bag from old clothing or fabric scraps
• Avoid buying glossy, foil or metallic wrapping paper. This kind of material is difficult to recycle.

Cards:

• Americans send out about 2.2 billion cards every Christmas. Why send snail mail when you can send e-cards?
• Recycle old cards into new ones
• Buy unbleached cards made of high % post consumer waste and soy-based inks
• Make your own unique plantable holiday cards out of discarded paper

Decoration:

• Convert your traditional Christmas lights to LED, which use up to 95% less energy than traditional holiday bulbs and last up to 100,000 hours indoors.
• Organize a Decoration Swap in your neighborhood, school or work…it’s new to you and didn’t cost a dime or send anything to the trash!
• Make ornaments out of used/unused household items
• Create paper wreaths, snowflakes and décor out of old newspapers, ‘junk’ mail and last years cards.
• Put candies, fruit and other edibles out as decoration
• Put those old packing peanuts to use by stringing them together with tooth floss (thanks Danny Seo, it looks just like popcorn!)

Trees (Buying):

• Despite conventional wisdom, artificial trees are not the ‘Greenest option’. Most are made of PVC plastic and may use lead as stabilizers. Christmas tree farms replace trees cut down and one acre of land planted with Christmas trees will produce enough oxygen for 18 people (Source: GreenYour.com)
• For the debate over artificial vs live tress check out Grist.org
• Find a local organic grower to avoid harmful pesticide reside from entering your home (especially if you have small children prone to putting good-smelling things in their mouths)
• If possible, purchase a native ‘potted tree’ which can be planted outside after the holidays.

Trees (Tear-Down)

• Each year, 50 million Christmas trees are purchased in the U.S. Of those, about 30 million go to the landfill (Environmental News Network)
• Compost it for mulch or use as fire wood
• Treehugger.com recommends sinking trees into a local pond (only if the tree has not been treated)

Feast

• Buy organic and/or locally produced food this year
• Buy loose veggies to avoid additional packaging
• Avoid single use containers and go for the nice china
• For more on eco-friendly holiday feast tips check out CNN.com

Recycle!

• Use Earth911’s recycling locator to recycle everything from old electronics, trees, ornaments, lights and gift bags.
• Freecycle last year’s gifts, ornaments etc. or drop off at a local Goodwill instead of chucking in the garbage.