Dreaming of a Green Christmasby Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger 16 Oct 2009 08:14 AM This holiday, why not make sure that you can celebrate by still being responsible? The holidays can be tough on green living practices, with all of the running around and the chaos. Normal things that you do to prevent waste can get put aside. Still, there are so many things that you can do to ensure that your Christmas is green. Light are the most obvious place where you can make some improvement for responsibility. You can replace older lights with more efficient ones, such as LED lights. This way, you will naturally use less electricity. You can also put your lights on timers instead of leaving them on all of the time. I cringe whenever I see outside holiday lights left on in the middle of the day. The next biggest impact toward having a green Christmas is to gift responsibly. Choose gifts for others or for your own wish list that won't end up as waste. Some ideas for less wasteful gifts include experience gifts, such as a membership to a local museum, consumable gifts, such as food or soy based candles, donation gifts to a charity in the recipient's name, or even gift certificates that can be redeemed for wanted gifts that are less likely to be discarded. Another good practice when it comes to gifts is to cut down on the exchange list. We all have too much stuff anyway, don't we? Try having all of the adults in your family pull names out of a hat for a one-to-one exchange, rather than having everyone puchase gifts for everyone else. Now let us talk about the Christmas tree. The best choice is to purchase a live tree that still has its root ball intact. After the holidays, you can take the tree and plant it in your own backyard or donate it to your local park and recreation department. They may be able to find it a nice home where everyone in your town can enjoy it all year long. You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here! Related Articles: Calculate the Real Cost of a Purchase Learn more about Mary Ann Romans  Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat. Relevantgreen living tags User Comments MichaelM (5) 26 Oct 2009 12:35 PMGreat article Mary Anne :) One big environmental problem at Christmas time is the tons of discarded wrapping paper that goes into our landfills. I know some people try to be super responsible by carefully unwrapping presents and folding the paper up to use next year. But we all know two things about Christmas. #1 is that Christmas is for the children. #2 is that children tear open presents on Christmas morning. We started Wrapsacks.com to encourage people to wrap their gifts in reusable cloth sacks instead of non-recyclable paper. We created a Track-a-Sack program to make reusing the gift bags more fun. Community Tags christmas, green living, holidays Discuss this article
|
Green Living categories |
