Green your Holiday Gatherings!
This festive time of year gives us a great opportunity to add a little GREEN to our lives. Check out these great tips to make your season joyful for yourself and your planet.
Add organic and local foods to your holiday feasts. Support local family farmers who grow sustainable meat and produce. Not only does the food taste better, you'll be doing your part for the planet too. Looking for an organic turkey or ham for Christmas dinner? Check out Local Harvest to find local green foods in your neighborhood. (LINK to http://www.localharvest.org/)
Decorate with natural materials. Replace those plastic, over-priced holiday decorations, with natural reusable decorations like whitewashed branches, gourds and pine cones. They can put you in the holiday spirit just as easily as a huge, inflatable snowman can.
Break out the real china. When it comes time to party down, do so with real dishes - not disposables. Ask your friends to borrow some of their plates and glasses or rent them. Cleanup will be a little tougher, but it's worth it. If you must use disposable, look for recycled content.
Invest in energy saving LED holiday lights. Decorate your house with LED lights that use 90 percent less energy than conventional holiday lights and will last for 200,000 hours. You could have these lights for the next 20 years! They can also save your family up to $50 on your energy bills during the holiday season!
Get a pesticide free tree. Some growers use 40 different pesticides, as well as chemical colorants on their holiday trees. The good news is that there are now a number of tree-farms that sell pesticide-free trees, so ask your local tree seller, or search for an organic tree farm near you. (LINK To http://www.localharvest.org/
Trees – real or artificial? Even though plastic trees are a petroleum-based product, if they are reused for many years instead of trashed, they can be a good choice. On the other hand, tree farms absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen (an acre of the trees emits enough oxygen to support 18 people), while providing wildlife habitat and stabilizing soil. After the holidays, chip evergreens into mulch or composted, don't trash them - they take up lots of landfill space!
Make your own wrapping paper. Most mass-produced wrapping paper you find in stores is not recyclable and ends up in landfills. Instead, here's a great chance to get creative! Wrap presents with old maps, the comics section of a newspaper, or children's artwork. If every family wrapped just three gifts this way, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.
Source: Natural Build Home (11/08)
