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 25 million tons of trash, generated from holiday gift buying, packaging, wrapping, and other related activities.
Wrapping holiday 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. According to Hallmark, about 1.8 billion holidays cards were sent in 2009, down from about 2 billion in previous years. In either case, the number of holiday cards sent each year in the United States is enough to fill a football field up to ten stories high and requires the destruction of approximately 300,000 trees. Also contributing to the waste stream are the packaging materials used to ship the more than 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 instruction, 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, 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. You can even give plantable note paper — a truly unique living gift!
- 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 Planet Green and Eartheasy.com.
- Use Christmas stockings for small gifts — no wrapping necessary! Reuse the stockings year after year.
- Pack your gifts smart: instead of artificial peanuts and packing materials, use reusable materials, such as real peanuts, dried beans, or dried pasta (all packed in reusable cloth bags of course!) or use shredded junk mail.
- 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, BlueMountain, 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.
