Staying Sustainable This Holiday Season

Lights, tinsel, and Christmas trees spread joy and cheer among people. They mark the beginning of the holiday season, one of the most festive times of the year. It is the season for family visits, gift exchanges, and big feasts, but it is also one of the most wasteful times of the year. Plastic shopping bags, gift wrappers, and decorations end up in landfills. Christmas trees and leftover foods are left to rot, releasing toxic gases into the atmosphere. Overall, these wasteful traditions amount to a 25 percent increase in household waste. This waste is harmful to the environment and causes long-term damage, but there are ways to reduce it.

Christmas Trees: 

Christmas trees are harmful to the environment when left to decompose in a landfill, but there are sustainable options to dispose of them.

• Renting a potted Christmas tree can be a good substitute. Rent a Christmas Tree has a program where they deliver potted trees to your house and pick them up after the holidays. 
• Artificial trees can be a sustainable option. However, the material they are made of is not easy to recycle, so to be sustainable, they must be reused.

Decorations:

Holiday decorations, while pretty, can be very harmful to the environment, from the plastic waste that ends up in landfills to the energy used to power Christmas lights. 

• Energy consumption can be reduced by switching to LED lights, which use less electricity than traditional lights.
• Reusing ornaments and decorations is an easy way to produce less waste.
• Making decorations out of recycled items reduces waste and saves money. 
• Donating decorations instead of throwing them away benefits the environment and community.

Shopping:

Holiday shopping is a fun tradition, but these holiday gifts result in most of the holiday season waste.   

• Buying second-hand items is less expensive and limits what ends up in landfills.
• Searching for sustainable and eco-friendly brands limits the impact items have on the environment.
• Returned gifts can have a negative impact on the environment, whether it be the process of returning them or the gifts ending up in landfills. When buying a gift for someone you might not know much about, think about getting them a gift card instead.

Food:

Food waste increases during the holiday season which, in turn, increases harmful CO2 emissions that damage the environment. 

• The simplest way to reduce food waste is by buying only what you need.
• Providing reusable containers for guests to take food with them would also reduce the amount of food being thrown away.
• Research shelters, food banks, or food donation centers in your area to see if they accept leftover food donations. 
• Compost food that can’t be donated. Community Compost Company offers resources to help ethically dispose of food scraps.

The holiday season, a joyous time, should not be so wasteful and harmful to the environment. There needs to be a change, protecting the environment needs to be a priority if we want to have a place to celebrate these holidays in the future.

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• environment
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