Christmas is approaching and we are excited to meet our friends and family. We’re already enjoying by eating our candies, decorating the Christmas tree and especially having lots of food!!! Of course, there is a lot when comes to Christmas. Also, there is a lot of trash at the end of all these celebrations. What are we going to do with them? I’ll be sharing my sustainability guide today. So, c’mon guys!!!!!!!! Let’s celebrate a zero waste Christmas!!!
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Table of Contents
Donate:
Before buying anything, donate the things which are lying untouched at your home. Donate your old clothes, toys, books and other kinds of stuff which are not used more than a year. This duration of 1 year says itself that you don’t need them in the future too.
Zero waste Christmas shopping:
Shop your clothes wisely by choosing the right brand. Either go for ethical brands or choose cotton or recycled materials. Make a list before shopping. This will help you to stay away from the unwanted ones as the festival sales allure you to buy more with their bright colours and decors.
When you’re buying cakes avoid the plastic knives and tissue papers. After having your delicious cake don’t forget to compost its cardboard box in your composter.
Zero waste Christmas gifts:
Gift for your loved ones:
Confused on what to gift your special one with your sustainability goals? Don’t worry. There are tons of options for the zero waste Christmas gifts!
- Take your bae to an awesome travel experience if he/ she loves to travel. But you’ve to book your tickets quite earlier as you know the tickets rate will not be the same during the holidays.
- Go for trekking to get a touch with our nature.
- If you’re too lazy to go for an adventure and happy to stay at your hometown, explore the places near you. Chances are you might even end up finding new places or cafes that suit your taste.
- Flowers will do the great work!
- Indulge in exotic food with your bae at a local restaurant.
- Cook their favourite food all by yourself from scratch at home and have a great dinner together. This will show your love towards them which cannot be expressed on our daily busy schedules. Also, it is less expensive and more romantic than a fancy dinner.
For your parents:
If you’re buying a gift for your parents, buy the stuff that they would love to have but in an ethical way. There are lots of ethical options out there. But I would say, gifting your time during the festival will be more valuable to our parents. So, don’t think too much and just be with them.
What about kids?
It’s an incredible opportunity to shape your kids for their better future. While gifting your little ones, you should think a little and more importantly don’t spoil them with expensive gifts like phones and video games.
- Why don’t you give a comic book to sow a great habit of reading?
- Go for a Rubik’s cube or lego toys or any other puzzle related games.
- Homemade chocolates instead of the packed ones.
- You can DIY toys with old plastic containers. This will encourage them to do with you and you’ll end up having a fun time together.
For friends and relatives:
- As of the sweets, why don’t you try cooking the authentic desserts of your country yourself and gift them?
- If you and your friends are adventurous freaks, try out bungee jumping, skydiving, sea diving, trekking instead of material things.
- Present them with the travel or their favourite restaurant coupons you have.
- Just gifting them the tickets to a concert or movie of their favourite star would do a lot.
- Invite them to the house and have a small party with reusable cups and plates.
- If any of your friend or family member is not into the zero waste lifestyle, encourage them to join in our community by presenting any sustainable gifts like a mason jar, produce bag, a bamboo toothbrush, plant etc.
- Instead of sending Christmas cards, send the e-cards.
- What about our natural DIY Lip Balm and Deodorant?
- If you really want to buy gifts, opt for the thrift stores and choose the high quality and useful items.
Wrapping gifts:
Try using old maps, magazine covers, cute towels or any colourful clothes, newspapers, brown composable sheets, comic book papers etc. Old ribbons and flowers will play the decorative part of the wrapped gift. go for the thread instead of tapes. It also gives a vintage look for authentic zero waste Christmas gifts. Use your creativity and play with the things you have.
Eco-friendly Christmas decorations:
Everybody loves to decorate their houses. And especially on Christmas, the streets will sparkle with lights, stars and Christmas trees in front of the houses. It’ll be a great treat to our eyes.
Now, what are we going to do in and out of our houses to décor for the stunning looks? Let’s look into them!
Decorations around the house:
Use what you have. Use the old papers and paint them with the watercolour. Give a touch to your old plastics to turn them into light bulbs. Upcycle the old bottles into lanterns. Use the fresh flowers instead of the synthetic ones so that you can compost them later. Use the toys you own and old clothes and ornaments to decorate around your house. If you really need to buy any décor items go for it but make sure to keep it safe for the next holiday season.
Reusing and taking responsibility reduces half of the waste.
LED light:
Lights play a major role in illuminating our houses for the whole Christmas season. Think about the energy you spend during the season and carbon emissions from them.
Do you know that half of the carbon emissions are from electricity production alone? Among that, 17% are only from the lighting. 830 grams of carbon are emitted from just 1KW of electricity.
So, let’s switch to the LED lights which are not only considered for saving energy but also reducing the carbon footprint to a great extent. A study depicted by using LED lights, carbon emissions got reduced by 570 million tons. This is equal to shutting down 162 coal-fired power plants!
Decorate your home with LED lights for an energy-saving and zero waste Christmas.
Zero waste Christmas tree:
Everyone wishes to have a Christmas tree in their childhood whether they celebrate Christmas or not. We have 2 choices over here. One we should buy a real Christmas tree or we can go for the plastic ones.
For a zero waste Christmas, few say that even though if you’re using the plastic ones here, it can be reused again and again for several years and thus we can prevent from cutting them and have it for every Christmas. But there are many things you should consider than the reusing part of the plastic tree.
When we are buying a real tree, we’re indirectly saying to the farmers to yield more Christmas trees. This results in more absorption of carbon dioxide and other unwanted gases. In return, it provides us with more fresh oxygen. It improves soil fertility and protects the water supplies while growing in the soil. When the tree goes to the composter after Christmas, the resultant compost will be more nutritious.
The thing is when you’re going for the plastic trees, reuse them for all your Christmas if not buy a real one but don’t forget to compost at the end.
While decorating your real Christmas tree, as I said before décor with the things which you already own or if you buy few items, reuse them every Christmas instead of buying new all the time.
A church in Bangalore, India creates sustainable Christmas trees every year for the past 12 years. This year they have created with the shredded printer papers. Awesome, right? It is cost-effective as well as putting the waste into something useful.
Food:
Food is one important thing when comes to any festivals. Whether the crowd is huge or not there is always more food at Christmas.
It’ll be wise if we cook them all by ourselves with our family members. This way, the bond between us will be increased and the take out containers will be decreased to zero. We produce more trash when we’re ordering or buying all our food from outside.
Going out for dinner is great and buying them with your own containers also would be awesome! Cook as per the needs. But it’ll not be the case when you’re about to throw a party at your house on Christmas eve.
By any chances, if you’re left with the leftover food, no problem. Store them in the refrigerator and have them for the next week. You’ll be exhausted from the whole cooking process and you can take rest for the entire whole week without your cooking responsibilities and which is great news!
Actually, I have this weird habit. Whenever we buy food from the restaurant in evenings, I’ll only have a little from it and then store it in the refrigerator for next day’s breakfast. I don’t know why am I doing this way? It may be due to the taste because I used to tell my mom that the taste of the dish just enhanced when I’ve them for the breakfast after storing it in the refrigerator.
Okay, Stories aside! What I’m coming to say is store your leftovers and have them the next day without wasting them. Or do a good deed by donating them to the poor, so that they can have a nice meal on their Christmas too.
That’s all guys… If you’ve any ideas on Zero waste Christmas share them with us in the comments.
Wish you a Merry Christmas!!!
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