Green Christmas – is it possible to be Green at Christmas?

Christmas is usually a time of year for having big parties, giving and receiving presents, consuming lots of food and drink, etc Generally summed up as ‘having a good time’. Given how much energy and effort goes into this yearly holiday – we should try to do our bit to give the environment a break as well. Below are several key tips on how to have a good time without hurting the environment.

Eco Christmas Cards and ‘ecarding’

Using paper cards to say ‘merry Xmas’ and ‘Happy New Year’ in this age of instant digital connectiveness seems rather old fashioned. Its also a rather environmentally expensive way to send a simple greeting. We suggest for those more ‘distant’ family or friends either use a ‘ecard’ (online cards) or make good use of environmentally friendly Christmas cards (i.e. recycled paper based or carbon offset).

Also if you do happen to receive old fashioned paper cards, do make sure they end up in the correct recycling bin, or save them for next year to ‘make’ your own Christmas cards (just don’t send the same card back to the original sender!).

Christmas Food and drink

When purchasing food and drink, do try and think about the ‘effort’ undertaken in supplying those to you. Especially consider:

• Buying locally if at possible, and buy locally grown food (it will also be fresher as well)
• Buying organic food – or grow it yourself…
• Buy fair trade foods

Also do not buy more than you realistically need; either that or buy food which either keeps or can be progressively consumed in the days following (anyone for yet more turkey?..).

Xmas Lighting

If you are going to have lights, do make sure that:

• you are using LEDs instead of traditional bulbs. LEDs will last up to 10 times longer, produce virtually no heat and dramatically reduce the power consumption.
• you put the lights on a timer, and don’t bother having the lights on after midnight

This is also a good time to replace old inefficient bulbs around the house with energy efficient ones. This is a great investment, as every low energy bulb you use could save a small fortune in its lifetime!

Also do make sure you do not overload power sockets and consider throwing out the really old christmas tree lights for some modern LED based lights. These not only consume less power and last longer they are safer as well (less heat & lower power rating).

Invest in rechargable batteries

if you have children, you really need to make sure you are operating a recharging ‘bay’ – i.e. get all the toys and gifts they have operating off rechargable batteries. This solves two problems; first you are helping the environment a little each time, and, secondly, your children will be ‘independent’ on their battery usage and provisioning – so saving you need to keep buying more batteries.

Modern day rechargable batteries, with a good charger, should be good for around a 1000 charge/discharge cycles. That amounts to quite a saving per battery over its life.

Want to know more?

We have a detailed article here with more Green Christmas hints and tips.

If you are looking for Green gift ideas, try this selection of Green living books and spread the word literally.

We hope this has given you a hint of how easy it is to be more Green at Christmas time and how it can save you money at the same time.