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Have a Green Christmas
One of the basic tenets we’ve built our company around is the Protect Our Planet value, which highlights our commitment to a balanced relationship with the environment. Our Rejoice, Reuse, Recycle products are an example of our continuing effort to be conscientious, which we think is the most beautiful part of creating the products we love.
The holiday season is such an exciting time: family in town, holiday parties, and the anticipation giving someone the perfect gift. But it can also be a time of excess, waste, and being too preoccupied to pay attention to our environmental impact. With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of fun, creative, and easy ideas for putting the green back into your Christmas festivities.
• Cardboard Christmas Tree – One of my least favorite experiences of the holiday season is driving around after Christmas and seeing dozens of discarded trees sitting out by the curb. It always made me wonder if there was a better option, and the folks over at Sustainable is Good have discovered one. Cardboard Christmas trees are 100% recyclable and reusable, not to mention fun to decorate with the family, and don’t take up much space in dorm rooms or small apartments. The best part is that a portion of the proceeds from the sale of each tree are donated to the Arbor Day Foundation’s Trees for America program, to replant and renew flagging forests.
• Surprise Balls – Everyone loves the way that gorgeously wrapped packages look stacked under the Christmas tree, but all of that paper that gets used once and then tossed can take a toll on our landfills. HippyShopper.com has come up with a creative way to skip the paper and reuse scraps. They’re called Surprise Balls, and all you have to do is wrap your gift in bits of leftover ribbon, silk, string, and yarn. You get to reuse leftover scraps, and the gift recipient gets to enjoy the anticipation as they unwrap the layers to find their present!
• Christmas Light LED-ucation – You know what’s so wonderful about LED lights? They use about a tenth of the energy of traditional Christmas tree lights, and they never get warm enough to pose the risk of setting your holiday shrubbery ablaze. Danny Seo over at Daily Danny shows you how to make the most of a traditional wreath by dressing it up with strands of LED lights for a decoration that will last for years.
• Eco-Wrap – If you just can’t bear to part with the idea of wrapping gifts in paper, then why not use eco-friendly options? Stephanie over at Eco Chick has rounded up a couple of companies that produce recycled and eco-friendly papers with gorgeous designs. That way you can be easy on the environment, without sacrificing any of the lovely under-tree eye candy.
• Green Gift List – And of course, what would a Green Christmas be without a wishlist of the most popular and cutting-edge Green gifts? And thanks to the folks over at Green Earth Journey, the work’s already been done for you. They’ve handpicked the coolest green gifts for everyone on your list, from solar powered device chargers to scented pencils, so your hard-earned money can go towards purchasing products you’ll feel good about giving.
Though the holiday season can be a hectic time of excess, if you’re conscientious and careful with your resources and money, you can have an eco-friendly Christmas to make Mother Nature proud.
