Take some time to think about the environmental effects
of your shopping this year.
Where possible, make changes to help protect the environment.
Use your own shopping bag or consolidate purchases
into one bag.
Shop electronically or by catalog from home.
Shop early and consolidate trips. Call ahead and
make sure the item you want is in stock.
Walk and use public transit when it is practical.
Environmentally Conscious Gifts
Buy gifts made from recycled material.
Buy energy saving gifts.
Battery recharger and rechargeable batteries.
Magazine subscriptions, books, game or play tickets.
Food items in reusable containers.
A gift certificate to buy a tree for later planting
or a house plant.
Family photos.
Give a gift of yourself. Offer to babysit, wash the
car, run errands or clean.
Buy gifts that are durable and long-lasting.
Membership to an environmental organization.
A low-flow shower head, toilet dam or compact fluorescent
light bulbs.
Give a gift to your home. Many home improvement projects
pay for themselves in short order.
A homemade wreath made out of natural materials such
as branches, dried flowers, herbs, etc.
Wrapping The Gift
Being
environmentally conscious doesn’t stop with gift buying and
shopping. Here are some ideas to help with your holiday gift wrapping.
Cover just the box lid so it can be reused or serve
as a storage box.
Use gift bags...they’re always reused.
Use those fancier shopping bags as gift wrap.
Use paper grocery bags to wrap packages for mailing.
Use the comics, comic books, or old road maps to wrap
those distinctive gifts.
Buy wrapping paper and ribbon made from recycled papers.
Use part of the gift for wrapping.
Use old holiday cards as gift tags.
Save your holiday boxes to reuse next year.
Decorate your own “Brown Bag” wrapping with
paint, markers, pictures cut from old cards or magazines, or, simply by adding evergreen sprigs, pine cones, sea shells,
etc.
Holiday Cards & Mailing
Did you know that
one year’s worth of holiday cards would fill a football field 10 stories
high? Local postmasters tell us that up to 20% of all mail is incorrectly addressed
or otherwise undeliverable! When mailing packages or cards, take a few minutes
to make sure you have the correct mailing address. To reduce and recycle, remember
to reuse packaging cartons and shipping materials.
Send cards via e-mail or try sending a holiday postcard!
Buy cards made with recycled paper.
Conservatree Helps Recyclers Find Holiday Cards Plenty of holiday cards are printed on environmental papers, including those from Hallmark, Brushdance, Sierra Club, UNICEF, Leanin' Tree, Amnesty International and many more, according to the list of environmental paper products published on Conservatree's website.
Trim Your “Waste” Line
Tis the season for parties, gift giving and festive
decorations. To keep up with it all, we need energy. So what if we have
seconds at the next holiday get-together, we have the hustle and bustle
of holiday shopping to burn it off, not to mention a whole new set of
New
Year resolutions. Until it’s time to squeeze into New Year’s attire,
we don’t think much about our “waist” line during the holidays,
nor our “waste” line for that matter. Where does all the uneaten food
go? American’s throw away 28 billion pounds of food waste per year. Things
can add up quickly
during the holidays. If every guest at grandma’s house left a tablespoon
of cranberry sauce on their plates, that alone adds up to 14 million pounds.
Try some of these suggestions this year
to reduce your holiday waste.
Determine how many adults vs. children are on your
guest list and prepare accordingly.
Don’t overdo the appetizers or dessert.
Send guests home with leftovers or be creative and
make new meals.
Store the extra food in reusable containers.
Create a compost pile in your backyard.
For office functions, order one less party tray
and donate the funds to a local food shelter.
When dining out, order only what you know you can
finish and don’t be shy about taking home what’s left.
Avoid using disposable plates, cups and utensils.
Purchase party foods and beverages in containers
that can be recycled in your community or reused again.
Recapture the warmth of a pot-luck supper and ask
every one to make something from scratch.
Save Energy
Walk to local parties, or carpool if you have to
drive. If possible, use public transportation.
Run appliances with full loads.
Let meats defrost to room temperature. They’ll
cook faster, save energy, and taste better too.
Cook multiple items in the same oven (make sure they
should cook at the same temperature).
Remember to use your own camera, disposable cameras
may be convenient, but they can also be wasteful.
Use faster film speeds, this will reduce the use
of the flash and save energy.
Use larger rolls of film vs. more rolls!
Avoid buying gifts that contain tropical hardwoods
or are made from endangered or threatened species.
Avoid buying gifts that are packaged with excess
materials.
Turn your fireplace into a furnace by using a heat
exchanger.
Buy outdoor light strands that are wired in parallel.
If one bulb burns out, the rest stay lit.
Energy saving LED lights are now more widely avaliable; look for LED lights for your holiday decorations.
Shop at antique stores, holiday bazaars and thrift
shops. Someone’s trash may be someone else’s treasure.
A Turnback Thermometer can reduce energy costs by
up to 12%.
Before your holiday get together, turn down the heat.
The extra body heat will help warm the room.
Tis The Season To Remember Those In Need
The holiday season is the perfect time to think of the environment
as well as remember
those less fortunate. Here are just a few helpful ideas.
For the person who has everything, give a gift or
donation to a charity or environmental organization in their honor.
Donate food to food banks.
Give surplus clothing, furniture and toys to social
service agencies to redistribute.
Donate those free gift with purchase items to a shelter.
Volunteer your time at a service organization.
The Holiday Get-Togethers
Beyond waste reduction and energy conservation, holiday
get-togethers often give us the opportunity to discuss environemntal
issues with the family and friends. While many of us would like to set
work aside for a few days over the holidays, sometimes conversations
wander into environmental topics. The Sierra Club has an excellent (partially
tongue-in-cheek) piece
on dealing with difficult relatives at the holiday dinner table.
It's must reading for everyone that has ever felt the need to defend
their
profession or position.
A Holiday Grinch Tale
The Grinch hated recycling especially
during holiday season.
Now please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be a paper cut once caused him great pain.
It could be holiday junk mail drove him insane.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his recycling bin was two sizes too small.
Whatever the reason, the junk mail or his small bin,
The Grinch chose to make everyone more miserable than him.
I won't pre-rinse: I'll make my recycling smell.
I'll hide garbage in my leaves so no one can tell.
I'll put out my papers on days when it rains.
I'll add in some food waste to cause dirty stains.
I'll recycle all plastics when only 1's and 2's are accepted
I'll put in 3's through 7's, who cares if I'm corrected.
I'll throw in some light bulbs, crystal and glass panes.
They say "glass containers" but they're really all the same.
And sometimes I'll simply throw my recycling away.
After all, who is it hurting, if I miss one day.
The collectors struggled to recycle what they could.
But the Grinch's recyclables were simply no good.
Left out on the curb, so full of contamination,
The overflowing bin sometimes littered. Oh, the abomination!
Week after week, the Grinch called the collectors the fools.
When week after week, he himself, broke all of the rules.
Then one day the Grinch happened to see
That the landfill was filling as fast as could be.
And the Grinch began to ponder the meaning of this
"In a landfill how long would his items exist?"
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.
Maybe recycling, he thought, isn't really a chore.
Maybe recycling, he thought, means a little bit more.
In a landfill, the waste items are good for no one
But in recycling, waste items create jobs and so on.
It is good to the earth and good for the community
And he thought that if everyone would recycle in unity
And buy recycled goods when they shopped at the store
And recycle correctly and recycle more...
Then, maybe, perhaps we could make recycling pay
What happened then in Pennsylvania they say
That the Grinch's small brain grew three sizes that day.
And the minute his mind wasn't feeling so maniacal,
He thought of more ways and more reasons to recycle.
And he spread these words to his neighbors and kin:
Recycle correctly and recycle more in your recycling bin.
And to prove that he was dedicated to completing the caper
He himself, the Grinch, switched to recycled-content paper.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Links To More Information
The New American Dream's SimplifytheHolidays.org site as the perennial go-to place for giving, and getting, more of what matters throughout the holiday season.
*This fact
sheet was done by the Professional Recyclers of Pa. Thanks go
to the Pa Resources Council, Keep America Beautiful, and the Use
Less Stuff Newsletter, from which portions of this factsheet were derived..
