Eco Christmas gifts – how you can have a green Christmas
Christmas is a time for celebration. A fun time with family and friends where enjoy good food, good company and lots of presents. But along with this comes a pretty heavy carbon footprint.
Christmas, and gift giving in particular, has the potential to be the least environmentally-friendly time of year. How many Christmas gifts have your received or even (gasp!) given which have been unwanted, thrown away or stored in the bottom of the wardrobe? Not to mention the waste created by the wrapping, plastic and frilly bows.
Choosing a ‘green’ Christmas gift is one of the easiest things you can to do to reduce your carbon footprint. Of course, the greenest Christmas gift is the one not given. But giving is one of the great joys of Christmas. We all love the feeling of making family and friends feel loved and appreciated. You don’t need to give that up to have a greener Christmas. By making a few small changes you can give the environment a happy Christmas too!
Use green gifting and sustainable gift specialists
By only buying from companies that specialise in green and sustainable gifting you can be sure that you gift has meets certain standards. Companies that sell organic gifts, fair trade gifts or other eco gifts have selected those gifts based on eco-friendly criteria. These companies will also have clear policies on what they are doing to support the environment and sustainability.
Rethink your Christmas gift wrapping
Have a think about Christmas waste. Where does most of it come from? It is almost all in the wrapping. Some people may try and save their Christmas wrapping paper but how many actually put it away for a whole year before reusing it? . An eco-friendly alternative is to choose recycled Gift Boxes which can then be reused again for gifts or even as storage containers. Also look for gift paper and cards made from post-consumer recycled paper that also use plant based or vegetable dyes, not chemical ink.
Choose gifts that are wanted!
Sounds basic enough but this can be a pretty hard thing to do. How many people do you have trouble buying for? There is always someone that you just don’t know what to give for Christmas. Gourmet gift hampers, wine gifts, beer gift hampers and BBQ gifts are classic gifts that are always appreciated. Sound a bit boring? There is no doubt they can be. There are lots of these types of gifts around, all pretty boring and predictable, not to mention often wrapped up in plastic. You can easily make these gifts eco-friendly. By giving an eco-friendly gourmet gift hamper you can be sure that one – it is eaten, two – it is different from the usual and three – you minimise the waste.
Reduce waste
Giving gifts that reduce waste are important. Choosing eco-friendly gift wrapping is one way. The other is giving gifts that are wanted and used. If all the beers are drunk in a beer gift, the bottled recycled, the recycled packaging reused you have a gift that has left very little behind.
Buy your Christmas gifts online
Doing your Christmas gift shopping online is another way you can have a greener Christmas. Online stores, and in particular, specialised green gifting online stores (like www.naturallygifted.com.au) are hosted on carbon neutral servers supported by green energy. If you buy online an eco-friendly gift store then you can buy all your gifts at the one time. They will all be delivered to you together. That is one delivery. Not 20 different trips to the shops to buy bits and pieces here and there. Just one visit to an online store and one delivery of all your Christmas gifts.
These are just some of the things you can do to have a cleaner, greener Christmas this year. You don’t have to give up the things you love. You just need to make a few small changes and it can make.
About the Author
Naturally Gifted is a green gifting service offering the widest range of green gifts, eco gifts and Christmas gifts, delivered Australia-wide.
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