Holiday gifts, decorations,
wrapping paper, and greeting cards all spread a great deal of cheer during the
holiday season, but they also take a tremendous toll on the environment. Between
Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, for example, Americans produce an additional 5
million tons of trash, generated from holiday gift buying, packaging, wrapping,
and other related activities.
Wrapping
holidays gifts in paper and ribbons may result in pretty packages, but most
of the finery ends up in the trash. If every family in the United States re-used
just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could circle
the globe. Finding alternatives to paper and ribbons would be a real gift to the
environment.
Don't forget greeting
cards. Approximately 1.9 billion
holiday cards are sent each year in the United States, enough to fill a
football field up to ten stories high and requiring the destruction of
approximately 300,000 trees. Also contributing to the waste stream are the
packaging materials used to ship the 1 million parcels delivered per day
by the US Postal Service during the holiday season.
It's not only possible, but
it's in to give environmentally conscious holidays gifts. Help support
Mother Earth with every holiday gift you give this year. Here's how!
- Give gift cards. Gift
cards can be for a specific department or grocery store or gift item, or you
can purchase services, such as auto repairs, music lessons, a community art
class, cooking instructions, housecleaning services, or a massage.
- Give the gift of time.
Such gifts are especially meaningful for anyone who can use maintenance or
personal services. Create a gift certificate that spells out your gift: for
example, mowing the lawn, driving the person to the grocery store once a week,
raking the leaves, weatherproofing the windows, cleaning out the attic, or
other types of services.
- Give tickets or a
membership. You can purchase tickets to a one-time event, such as a concert;
general admission tickets for a movie theater or art gallery; season tickets
to the theater or sports events; membership to an art museum, special interest
group (such as a nonprofit), or health club.
- Buy holiday gifts made
from recycled materials and/or that support the environment. The availability
of such holiday gift items is growing in leaps and bounds. Read product labels
to identify those holiday gifts that contain recycled materials. Some places
to begin your search include: Ecomall.com,
Wonders of the World,
Abundant Earth,
Close the Loop.com,
FindGift.com,
EcoExpress.com, or
Earth Fashions.
- Choose holiday gifts
that are made locally. This saves on transportation costs and greenhouse gas
emissions.
- Give homemade gifts:
fresh baked goods, candies, handcrafted items (use recycled materials if
possible), a family video or DVD, or a special scrapbook.
- Give living gifts: a
potted plant, bulbs tucked into a flower pot for planting in the spring, seeds
and pots for a windowsill herb garden, bird seed and a bird feeder. Even
wrapping paper can grow: when you are done using
plantable wrapping paper, you can plant it and watch the wildflowers
emerge.
- Purchase a sponsorship
or make a donation to the recipient's favorite charity. This type of holiday
gift keeps giving year round. Many environmental and animal welfare
organizations offer a small gift as a token of their appreciation for such
donations, adoptions, or sponsorships, and you can give the gift along with
notification of the donation.
- Consider holiday gifts
that promote sustainability; for example, rechargeable batteries and charger,
solar-powered or hand cranked radios and flashlights, solar ovens, or LED or
solar-powered lamps.
Shopping, Wrapping,
Sending Cards
- Instead of wrapping
holiday gifts, make the wrap part of the gift. Wrap a doll in a blanket; put
jewelry in a purse; wrap kitchen gifts in a kitchen towel. This is also a
great way to introduce the use of reusable shopping bags: "wrap" your gifts in
canvas totes!
- Many holiday gifts,
especially large items, don't need to be wrapped: simply place a bow on the
gift or tie a recycled greeting card to the present (use the front of used
cards as gift tags).
- Create your own wrapping
paper using recycled brown paper bags. You or your children can decorate them,
and the paper can be recycled. You can also use newspaper (comics are great
for kids' gifts), old maps, or pictures from old calendars or magazines. For
more ideas, see
Eartheasy.com.
- Use Christmas stockings
for small gifts — no wrapping necessary! Reuse the stockings year after year.
- Hide holiday gifts
rather than wrap them. Create a list of clues that the gift recipient(s) must
decipher to find the hidden presents.
- Use your own shopping
bags--canvas or cloth--to carry your purchases.
- Shop at flea markets,
estate sales, and second-hand shops. Every used item you purchase is one less
that could have ended up in a landfill, and it reduces the demand for new
resources.
- Send e-cards. Not only
do you save resources and postage, but you can customize your e-cards with
personal greetings and music. Most e-cards are animated, you can send as many
as you want. There are many sources of e-cards on the internet; some of which
include
American Greetings,
123Greetings,
Care2, and
Hallmark, among others.
- Save, donate, or recycle
boxes, cards, wrapping paper, or decorations from your own home and, if
possible, from office parties or other holiday events. Plan ahead: have a
large box or other suitable container available for the collection and let
participants know these items are being collected.
During this season of
giving, let's give back to the planet as well. Exchange environmentally
conscious holidays gifts and expand the cheer you spread this year.
