How to Green Your Holiday

The holiday season is here and before running around scrambling to buy gifts, cards, trees, lights and decorations galore, take a moment to remember what the holidays really mean and how you can celebrate without harming our environment.  

According to National Geographic, between Thanksgiving and New Years, Americans throw away an extra million tons of garbage each week. This additional trash includes holiday wrapping, packaging, cards, food, paper plates, napkins, party decorations, bottles, cans, and more.

So, with that in mind, here are 10 helpful ideas, along with some interesting facts and figures that hopefully will make it easy for you to celebrate while helping preserve our environment.  

• Recycle Your Tree: Instead of taking up space in a landfill, trees picked up by the City of Summit are ground up into wood chips which can be used as mulch. Look for announcements on days trees are picked up in your neighborhood after the holidays right here on Patch or on the city's website.

• Buy a Potted Tree:  While potted trees are a great green option, they often don't fare well in unseasonably warm homes. If you purchase a potted tree plan, keep it in a cool spot, water it often and take it outside as soon as possible for planting in the spring.

• Choose an Artificial Tree:  Another alternative is to purchase an artificial tree, which look quite realistic, have a variety of scents, and even come strung with lights these days.  The one-time purchase of an artificial tree can save money over time as well as trees.

• Use Low-Energy Lights: If you are decorating your home and tree with lights look for lights made with LEDs. LED lights, which release little heat, use semiconducting material rather than incandescent filaments and are 90 percent more efficient than traditional lights. According to one U.S. Department of Energy study, if everyone replaced their conventional holiday light strings with LEDs, at least two billion kilowatt-hours of electricity could be saved in a month!

• Send e-Cards or Eco-Friendly Cards: Sending e-cards this holiday season won't waste a single tree, and besides, those customized Jib-Jab e-cards are hysterical! If you still want to send a physical card, look for those printed on 100 percent recycled paper or tree-free cards.  Also, you and the kids can take time to make your own customized holiday cards.

• Travel Eco-Friendly: If you plan to take a vacation during the holidays, consider eco-tourism trips where you participate in research projects such as counting whales or fish or measuring sea turtles on the beach.

• Party Green: Minimize using disposable products when entertaining guests. Paper products made from recycled materials are much easier to find these days. You can even purchase plastic-looking eating utensils made from corn-based materials that are biodegradable.

• Make Your Own Decorations: Create eco-friendly decorations using popcorn, pine cones, evergreens, berries and other natural materials.

• Recycle Holiday Gift Wrap: Much of the additional waste headed to the landfill during the holiday season comes in the form of gift wrap and packaging. Save wrapping paper, bags, boxes, tins, ribbons and bows for next year's use.  When purchasing new wrapping paper and bags, look for those made from post-consumer recycled material. This avoids cutting down any new trees and "closes the recycling loop." Try some of these wrapping paper alternatives, too:  
• Old maps, or colorful ads from old magazines
•  Baskets
• Reusable tins
• Leftover fabric or fabric gift bags
•  Newspapers and Sunday comic pages
• Last year's holiday paper

If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet, according to National Geographic.

• Give the Gift of Green: Many unwanted gifts end up in storage or even in the garbage and the excess packaging of consumer goods also adds to the waste stream. Gift-giving can be both meaningful and eco-friendly.

1. Make your own gifts: knit, sew, make preserves, or make art from reused items.
2. Look for gifts that are made of natural components, such as sustainably harvested wood, natural fibers, or recycled glass. When purchasing toys for young children, choose items that are safe such as dolls and stuffed animals made of organic cotton, or handcrafted toys made from wood with nontoxic paint.
3. Purchase gifts from local vendors, or that were made locally.
4. Give a membership or donate in the name of a friend to an organization working in a subject area of interest to them such the St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center, SAGE Eldercare or the Summit Volunteer First Aid Squad.
5. Give a gift certificate for your time. Offer your talents, such as photography, music, basketball lessons, financial planning, or hairstyling. Make dinner for someone or cook and deliver it to them.
6. Plant a tree in someone's name.

By taking a little time to do a few small things in a different, more cost-effective way you can enjoy your holidays while doing your part to protect our environment.