Healthy and Green Living

The holidays are a time of family! joy! celebration!—and mountain ranges worth of trash! Read these green wrapping tips and our general holiday recycling advice to minimize your holiday waste without diminishing your holiday spirit.

Wrapping Wisdom

The average consumer wraps 20 gifts during the holidays. If just three of those gifts were wrapped in reused paper or a paper alternative, the paper saved could cover 45,000 football fields!

• Use decorative newspaper ads, colorful pages from magazines, old book pages, music sheets, old maps, calendars, or Sunday comics to wrap with.
• Chances are that if you have a child, you have heaps of drawings and paintings that you are constitutionally unable to throw away. Make Junior proud and Grandma happy: Use that old art for wrapping paper.
• Wrap gifts in fabric, reusable cloth bags, pillowcases or baskets.
• Cut wrapping paper or children’s art to fit the top and bottom of a gift box and permanently attach it—that way the box can be reused without having the paper ripped to open it.
• Reuse old ribbons and wrapping paper (if wrinkled, press with a warm iron).
• Use flowers, evergreen sprigs, rosemary sprigs (yum!), pinecones, yarn, or reusable hair ribbons instead of plastic bows.
• Use very little tape or none at all when wrapping to reduce rips so that paper can be reused.
• Use the fronts of old holiday cards as name tags for this year’s gifts.
• Create a scavenger hunt in your home by hiding unwrapped gifts and giving each of your family members clues to find them.
• If buying new wrapping paper, purchase recycled-content paper. Try these two companies that make lovely 100 percent recycled wrapping paper. It is more expensive, but gorgeous, highly durable and very reusable—a gift in itself! Fish Lips Paper Designs and Paper Mojo.

RESOURCEFUL RECYCLING

Wrapping Paper
There was a time when Emily Post would have suggested that reusing wrapping paper was tasteless, now it seems scandalous not to. But think beyond using used paper for next year’s gifts, it can be used for book covers, scrap books, drawer liners, and any number of craft projects.

Christmas Trees
There are almost 40 million fresh-cut Christmas trees sold in North America and discarded every year. Many communities offer Christmas tree collection events, where old trees are used to make wood chips or are used to help prevent beach erosion. Contact your local sanitation department to find out if an event is happening in your community. Alternately, if you or a neighbor owns a wood chipper, turn your Christmas tree into chips that can be used in your garden.

Christmas Tree Decorations
Do not use tinsel on your tree, it disqualifies the tree for recycling and stray tinsel can be dangerous to wildlife. Purchase LED tree lights which use 90 percent less energy—also, their much longer lifespan (50,000 hours!) decreases the need for replacement. Holiday LEDS is a good online source. Use ornaments made from recycled and/or recyclable materials.

Entertaining
Too many Christmas dinner leftovers? Be sure to send your guests home with food to reduce food waste. Before you entertain, check around with local soup kitchens or shelters. Although many of them have strict guidelines about food donations, arranging a delivery of excess party food is deeply more satisfying than watching it decay in your fridge.

Replaced Items
If a new gift challenges the tipping point of your closet space or room in the toy box, remember to donate what you no longer need and responsibly recycle what can’t be donated. Clothes and household items can go to Salvation Army among other charities. Make sure they are clean and in good working order. Toys can be donated to children’s hospitals, orphanages, preschools, homeless shelters and other places. Donated toys should be clean, safe and lead-free. Phones and electronics can be taken to cell phone or electronics stores for collection.