Eco-Friendly Tips for the Holidays

Many people love decorating for the upcoming Christmas holiday. Whether you are an early bird and put your decorations up after Halloween, or wait until December, everyone needs a little holiday spirit. Interior and exterior Christmas decor keeps you festive and helps get you and everyone else in the mood for the season. Have you ever considered using eco-friendly methods to replace your normal routine? You can make small changes to help save the environment, while still maintaining beautiful decorations.

Natural Christmas Tree

Many families already do this, but consider buying a real tree every year. In the long run, it might be cheaper to purchase a fake tree to use every year. However, you are supporting local businesses by buying trees from them. Additionally, a real tree livens up your home because they are all unique and have the traditional evergreen smell many people love. Instead of lighting a candle, a tree will do it for you!

When you are finished with your Christmas tree for the year, look into recycling this as well! There are places that turn them into mulch and wood chips for projects instead of throwing them in landfills.

Wrap Gifts Wisely

Millions of paper is used to wrap all the Christmas gifts for families around the world. However, if you were to reuse ribbons, bows, and other items used to decorate your gifts, it would help save paper. Another great idea is to use a scarf, towel, or other item to wrap things, and use that as a gift as well! Someone may get two gifts in one by doing this instead of ripping up wrapping paper and throwing everything away.

Biodegradable Cards

Many companies and businesses make recycled cards to use for special events and holidays. There are places that have Christmas cards that are biodegradable so when you throw them away they will decompose over a shorter time. Other places have seed cards, which you can plant in your garden to grow something! This can be anything from flowers, vegetables, or other plants that can act as a second gift itself!

Light Up Homes

If you are out shopping for Christmas lights for your house, buy LED lights! These use 70-90% less energy than regular lights. They also last longer so they will cost less in the long run as well. Additionally, using a timer also helps you save energy. Set your lights to come on when it's dark in your area, and then to turn off automatically at a certain time. This will help to save you money on electricity as well.

Cook and Eat Well

If you are big on cooking for the holidays, try to portion dishes depending on how many people you have. If you end up cooking too much, there are always too many leftovers that go to waste. If you prefer to still do this and make sure you have enough food, let people take it home! Send leftover plates with your guests so they will eat it as well. That leaves you with less food in your home and you are less likely to throw it away.

Small changes make it easy to transform to an eco-friendly holiday. You can just adjust what you buy without making it more expensive or any different than what you did before. However, the impact you make will be significant if more people continue to do this.

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