a greener holiday season

I know it's a little early still, but I'd like to start this thread before it's too late to save up & actually MAKE any changes for this year.

We are trying to instill in our children a sense of responsibility for the planet that doesn't end when the holiday season begins. I would love to hear ALL of your ideas on how to have a more conscious holiday season. They can be ideas on energy-efficiency, nature-friendly, waste-reduction… we’re working on all of these. Here is what we are ALREADY doing:

* instead of wrapping paper, we use holiday-fabric bags & a few of those pretty reusable boxes
* all of our ornaments are nonbreakable and/or handmade & we have an artificial tree that's reused each year
* we have a bird-tree outside that gets decorated with handmade birdseed ornaments & popcorn strings
* we give AND request homemade gifts, gift-cards, or memberships to fun places... and have a "no toys with batteries please" policy that our entire family respects
* received Christmas cards are given to a friend post-season who reuses them each year
* I do make Christmas cards for friends & family, but those going to friends we'll see in person are hand-delivered... it saves on postage & gasoline since the mailman doesn't have to deliver them
* special holiday treats are chosen for their eco-friendliness and/or are homemade

While I want to hear EVERYONE'S ideas, we'd like to focus on better decorating this year... specifically lighting. In past years we've strung mini-lights around our entire roofline, along both decks, and throughout the inside of our house... I think we’ve had as many as 3500 lights PLUS the 6-700 lights on our tree! Last year nearly every string we had died. I suppose it shouldn't have surprised us since they were all bought the same year, but it shocked us nonetheless.

So we’re essentially starting over this year. I know I saw LED light strings in the stores last year, and I'm thinking of getting one or two strings of the bigger bulbs instead of the minis for use indoors, and am considering ONLY decorating our smaller front deck this year - to save on electricity AND storage space. Does anyone have any other ideas? What do YOU do?
love,
mom

 

Im still working on making christmas more eco-friendly.

I have heard about using holiday fabric gift bags, will have to try and encorporate that this year.

As for the lighting.. My mom made these ice candle decorations. She filled an old coffee can with water, putting something down the center to keep space for a tea candle.

Very cute for adding some extra sparkle out doors, although I dont know how much I would trust leaving candles un-attended outside!

 

I don't buy my own wrapping paper, I reuse those that were wrapped around gifts of previous years that I received. The universe supplies plenty of wrap, just gotta salvage them before they go to waste.

Despite what they say about the rules of gift etiquette, re-gifting is eco-logically/nomically sound.

 

Well we bought the LED Christmas lights And we cut WAY back on the number of lights we're using too. So instead of 700 regular lights, our tree now has 300. The bulbs are bigger & brighter too, so it's still plenty bright.

On another thought, our mailman has the same delivery route every day regardless of whether *I* get any mail or not. So in a way I could say that I'm not adding to his gas consumption at all, right? On the other hand if I have to take the car for the day to go shopping, it's 40 miles round-trip to drop my husband off at work & then go get him again PLUS whatever it takes to drive around to different shops. So with the absolute best possible scenario I'm ONLY driving 40 miles to shop locally. With my car's mileage, that's 1 1/3 gallons of gas... and more realistically, probably two each time I decide to take the car for the day. So I'm going to work on catching these "free shipping" deals for online stores & save gas/pollution by NOT taking our car to go shopping as often.

Does that make any sense?
love,
mom

 

^I agree about taking advantage of the mailman's fixed route as a way to save gas, and I like a lot of your other ideas.

While I support that you don't buy a fresh tree every year, I'm a much bigger fan of an actual LIVE tree for Christmas. You can reuse it year after year after year and it can get to a nice size if pruned and potted correctly. And rather than being a piece of non-living mass that just sits in the closet for the rest of the year as a fake tree would, a living tree can spend the other 11 months outside creating oxygen and enriching the environment.

 

I have always liked the idea of having a potted living tree for a Christmas tree. I have known a few people that did this and said it was fairly easy if you keep it pruned. But I don't decorate at all, no tree or lights. I guess it is a bit unfestive but atleast I am not creating as much waste. I always spend the holidays at other family members' houses so never really felt the need or desire to decorate my place.

 

Here are some pros and cons of real vs. fake Christmas trees for a greener holiday season:

http://www.ctcns.com/fake-real.pdf

read up and decide fo' yo'self

I enjoy decorating for the solstice because it's truly a celebration of the light and sunshine to come

 

We've considered real & living trees in the past. The problem is that we're in Minnesota & most living trees don't make it 'til spring to be planted so we might as well have chopped one down... and killing a tree just to decorate the house doesn't seem very "green" to me. We do have a living tree - it's our "wildlife tree" (an ornamental crabapple) that is full of homemade suet ornaments and popcorn strings. But to have an actual Christmas-ey tree... our neighborhood is such that anything we hung outside would be stolen or blown away in the first winter storm that came through.

But the biggest problem is that my son & I are allergic to trees. (sigh) My mom used to bring in evergreen trimmings every Christmas morning when I was a girl, and by the end of the day I was so swollen & puffy I could barely see. So until we can move somewhere that we could have a sheltered evergreen planted, I don't see many alternatives as far as the tree goes.

 

aww... no fun to be swollen and puffy. Sounds like you made a good compromise with the crabapple tree