Depending on how excited you are about Christmas, the countdown to the biggest holiday on the calendar has begun. If you are one of those who are usually super excited about Christmas, you probably started your countdown many months ago. It is that time of the year, when you catch up with members of your family that you have not seen, for a long time. Perhaps, since last Christmas.
Having all your family under one roof comes with all the excitement of seeing those you like and those you are not so keen on. You will be seeing uncle Tom, who is not necessarily your favorite uncle, but he will be with aunty Jane, whom you love dearly. You cannot buy aunty Jane a present, without buying one for uncle Tom too. You got uncle Tom a ghastly tie you know he will absolutely loathe and something nice auty Jane would like.
You can be different in 2020. You can buy fewer stuff, reduce your environmental impact and give uncle Tom and aunty Jane a thoughtful Christmas neither of them can argue with. You only need to let them know that you are going green this Christmas and they would understand. You can extend your green gesture beyond your Christmas gifts. Here is a list of 7 other ways to reduce your ecological footprint this Christmas.
- Send an eCard instead of a paper greeting card.
Hundreds of thousands of trees are pulped each year, to make Christmas cards and Christmas wrapping papers. Instead of buying Christmas cards this year, why not send a charity Christmas ecard. In addition to the environmental benefits of an ecard over paper greeting card, you also donate to a worthwhile charity when you send a charity Christmas ecard.,
- Rent a Christmas tree instead of buying one
In the UK, more than 8 million Christmas trees are sold in the lead-up to the big day. From the 2nd of January, most of 8 million trees are thrown away, creating a mountain of waste. When you think of the resources that go into growing a tree, which is then used for less than three weeks and thrown away, you will see that renting a tree is not such a bad idea. There are a number of places you can find Christmas trees for hire. The best way to find the one closest to you is to do a search for a local Christmas tree hire in your favourite search engine.
- Reduce waste and preserve leftovers
One thing we are never short of around Christmas is food and drinks. Most people buy much more than they need over Christmas, leaving plenty of food once the merriment is over. A great number of people tend to throw the leftovers away. Most of the leftover food can be frozen, to be eaten at a later date. Dealing with leftover food this way will not only save you money but reduce your carbon footprint. There are hundreds of websites on the internet that show you to make a delicious meal out of leftovers.
- Travelling to joining family members of Christmas
Christmas is a time when we join our family to celebrate. If you live in London and your parents live in Liverpool for example, Your journey to spend Christmas with them will put over 60kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. If you travel by public transport such as a train, your footprint will be less than half of that. So, making your journey by train is a more environmentally friendly way to travel to your parents in Liverpool at Christmas time.
- Save one of a quarter of a million turkeys wasted at Christmas
The non-vegetarian and non-vegan among us eat an awful lot of meat over Christmas.
Turkey is the meat of choice. It is all well and good if we actually eat all the turkey we buy and cook. It was reported in 2014 that 4.2 million Christmas dinners were wasted. That translated to over 250,000 turkeys that we bought, cooked but never eaten.
If you plan your Christmas meal carefully, you can potentially save one of the 250,000 turkeys that is wasted.
- Unwanted gifts galore
One of the irony of Christmas celebrations is that we spend hours and hours queuing to buy Christmas presents for our loved ones. Within a few short weeks, in January we will be queuing to return many of the presents. This makes no sense at all. You can avoid this by asking each person you want to buy a gift for, what they would like. This simple question could save both of you the obligatory queue to return unwanted Christmas gifts.
- Instead of presents donate money to a charity
One section of society often forgotten during Christmas are the homeless, the orphans and other people who can use our help. Water poverty alleviation charity Hope Spring has a scheme where you donate what you could have spent on Christmas. They use your donation to build a well for communities in need of water in Africa. As part of their “thank you” for your donation, they also send an eCard to your, or a person of your choice from their range of eCards
There are dozens of other ways to ensure your carbon footprint during Christmas 2020 is the lowest possible. Some of these carbon-reducing tips are known to you, you just need to think of them. You can also search your favorite search engine, to read up on more ways to impact the environment positively this Christmas.
