Tips for a Sustainable Christmas

Christmas Cards

Christmas cards are a perfect way to connect with your family or friends during Christmas, especially during this time. However they can also turn into unnecessary waste. You can recycle any cards made out of paper, however the cards containing glitter, ribbons and other extras can be upcycled instead and we have a few ideas on how to do it.

  • Turn them in Christmas decorations:
  • Christmas Cards memory collage
  • Frame the cards to make Christmas decorations
  • Turn them into name tags for the table
  • Repurpose the card design as gift tags
  • Bookmarks

Tip: buying cards in bulk will reduce the unnecessary packaging waste.

Leftovers

To ensure no one is left hungry on Christmas we always fill our fridges with various Christmas goods, however a lot of it ends up in our food bins. Try out these recipes made with leftovers and remember that you can always tweak them to use the ingredients you have at home!

Tip: Buy Irish groceries as they require less transpiration and leave a smaller carbon footprint!

Christmas Lights

Christmas lights play a crucial part in our Christmas decorating rituals but they can be very energy consuming and can have a very negative environmental impact. However, there are ways to lower the impact and still enjoy the beauty of the lights.

  • Use LED-powered Lights: LED lights are a more energy efficient way of decorating the house with lights as they consume 90% less energy than incandescent bulbs and they last longer too!
  • Use Solar-powered Lights: The sun is a great sustainable source of energy especially for your outdoor lights that’s not only renewable but great for your electricity bill too!
  • Use a Timer Socket: by using a timer socket, you can set a preferred time for the lights to turn off and on automatically. This is especially useful in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep and can’t enjoy the festive lights.

Gift Wrapping

By the end of the festive season our bins are filled to the brim with wrapping paper and it’s important to know what we can recycle and what goes into general waste bin. First of all, any decorations (bows, ribbons, stickers) must be removed along with the tape as they cannot be recycled (apart from twine ribbons). Then you have to look at the paper: foil or glitter paper cannot be recycled.

Tip: If you can tear the paper you can recycle it, but if you can only cut it with scissors it isn’t.

Tip for last minute shoppers: when choosing the wrapping paper look at it’s decorations such as glitter or foil and choose a more recyclable option. You can also wrap your presents into a piece of fabric using a Japanese wrapping method called furoshiki.