How To Be More Sustainable This Holiday Season

*I just wanted to add a quick note about my last post. Where I wrote 5 (or 6?) things you could start doing right away to live a more sustainable lifestyle, I forgot to add something super important: take public transportation, walk/bike, carpool when you can to reduce the amount of fossil fuels you put into the atmosphere* 

As I said in my introductory post, life in the 21st century is based on the idea of waste. There is no better example of that then during the holidays.

Here a few quick facts about waste during the holidays (courtesy of EarthHero):

• Americans discard 38,000 miles of ribbon every year, that's enough to wrap around the earth and tie a small bow
• If every American family wrapped 3 presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields
• An extra 7 million pounds of waste will accumulate between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day
• Holiday lights in the U.S. use enough electricity to power over 173,000 homes for a year
• 1 out of 3 Americans have an unused Christmas present sitting in their closet

People buy things during the holidays that are specifically made to only be used once and then thrown away (like wrapping paper, bows, and ribbon). This practice alone is no where near sustainable. So what can you do to avoid the wasteful practices of American holidays? 

Here is a short list to get you started: 

• I know Halloween has passed, but use these ideas for next year!
• Shop second hand for costumes
• Make your own costumes 
• Use a reusable bag for trick or treating 
• either buy one or go old fashion and use a pillow case!
• Try to get candy or goodies for trick or treaters that has less plastic packaging 
• these will probably be more natural, handmade candies
• Do something else on Black Friday besides shop
• In Oregon all state parks are free for "Green Friday" 
• If you must shop, choose to shop online and skip the 2 day shipping, choose standard shipping instead 
• 2 day shipping is harder on the environment because that means more trucks trying to get your product to you as fast as possible (which equals more carbon emissions!)
• During Thanksgiving, try to only have 1 dish that contains meat
• Our 1 meat dish this year will be a vegetable and meat swiss roll
• Pledge to plant a tree in the new year to help reforest our planet
• Chop up your Christmas tree to use for firewood, or give it to someone who you know needs it for heat  
• Hand make gifts 
• Donate to a charity in someone's name as a gift 
• Look for things around your house that you received as a gift, but have never used
• otherwise known as re-gifting 
• Shop second hand for gifts 
• Buy from small and local businesses 
• Put a timer on your holiday lights so they aren't on for too long 
• Don't use paper plates or plastic utensils for any big holiday meal
• yes this means more dishes, but hey it's for the planet
• Make your own holiday decorations
• We did that this year and it was honestly really fun and super rewarding
• This includes your own ornaments!
• Use materials you have around the house to wrap presents
• Paper bags 
• Newspaper
• Cardboard boxes
• Buy paper tape instead of plastic
• String or yarn (in place of ribbon)
• Buy recycled wrapping paper from EarthHero
• https://earthhero.com/
• I will talk about them quite a bit in my blog (they are awesome)
• Use all the wrapping paper in your closet before buying more
• First rule of sustainability: always use what you have before consuming more

I'm sure there are lots of other ideas out there for how to be more sustainable during the holiday season and if you have some, please share! 

I hope this short post helped you get some ideas on how to stay on track through your zero waste journey during the holidays 😊

~Sadie~