Green Holiday Ideas

Reduce your consumption this holiday season. Here are a few tips:
-If you buy a real tree use the needles for garden mulch
-Buy a potted tree, plant after use
-Switch to LED holiday lights
-Send ecards rather than paper mail, but if you do stick to snail mail create your own cards from recycled materials
-Carefully read the labels of girts marketed as 'green'
-Cook up a low carbon meal (see previous post below)
-Give consumables to those who live in small spaces, chances are clutter will be tossed
-Give services such as massages or gym memberships to reduce material consumption
-Buy ethical products: fair trade, organic, low carbon
-Buy vintage holiday attire and gift classic items or second hand books
-Instead of gift baskets give friends gift cards so they may select what they like and throw out less
-Save your Christmas cards and reuse the unmarked fronts next year as gift tags
-Bake gifts and present them in reusable containers like tins and mason jars that you have laying around the house anyway
-Read holiday stories to the family rather than watching TV
-Dim the lights, save energy and flatter your guests
-Serve slowly, rather than gorging your guests roll out the food slowly so their tummy's have a chance to recognize how much they've consumed
-Be active during the holidays, go skating or for a walk in the snow
-Buy gifts of hope from Plan Canada, a non-partisan organization with no religious affiliations
-Keep the holidays light, this isn't the time to debate global warming


To consider:
How to select a real or fake tree
12 ways to green Christmas