Sustainable Holiday Tips
The end of year holiday season started several weeks ago - you could argue it started after Halloween. If you’re like me, a procrastinator when it comes to shopping and holiday preparations, this post will still be timely and useful. These tips can also be useful year round. We have posted tips for being more waste-free around the holidays each of the last two years (2022 and 2021 posts). We will reiterate some of the tips from the prior posts here.
Gift Wrapping
Over 2 millions pounds of wrapping paper end up in landfills each year. Some could be recycled. Some isn’t able to be recycled due to non-paper additives (e.g. glitter). What’s are some sustainable alternatives? Reusing gift bags, getting a roll of brown Kraft paper and decorating your packages, saving the brown paper inserts that come in package deliveries, or use fabric to wrap gifts are great options! Here is a simple way to wrap a wine or liquor bottle using a tea towel.
Any type of fabric can work as long as it’s the right size. You can purchase nice tea towels or Furoshiki fabric and make something a combo gift. Or just use what you have!
Here are more resources for waste-free gift wrapping:
The Green Wrapper YouTube Channel
“How to make holiday gift wrapping less wasteful” - Washington Post
Decorations
Decorating around the holidays can be fraught with unsustainable choices. We don’t want to “Bah Humbug” anybody’s holiday festivities, but we do want to encourage you to make eco-conscious choices when possible. With that said, if you do buy decorations that wouldn’t be considered sustainable due to the materials they are made from, just take care of them and use them every year. What about making your own decorations? If you have oranges or other citrus fruit that you won’t be able to use, you can turn them into garland, like Co-Director Natalie did this year.
Here’s easy DIY recipe for Dried Orange Garland: https://www.thequickjourney.com/easy-diy-how-to-make-dried-orange-ornaments
Waste-Free Cooking/Baking
Baking cookies during the holiday season is a tradition for many people. Brown sugar is a common ingredient in a lot of recipes, and it’s also something that commonly comes in plastic packaging. It is really easy to make your own brown sugar using granulated sugar and a little molasses.
https://sugarspunrun.com/how-to-make-brown-sugar/
Unique, Homemade Gifts
Finally, our last sustainable tip is to give unique and homemade gifts. We discovered this recipe recently for Chai Spiced Nut Butter, and after you whip up a few batches, you can fill small jars that hopefully you’ve been saving for just this occasion.
https://minimalistbaker.com/chai-spiced-nut-butter/
*****
We hope you have a joyful, and waste-free holiday season!