Christmas creates some of life’s fondest memories. It can also generate a significant amount of waste. Even if you try to minimize your planetary impact year-round, your holiday traditions could work against your sustainable values. Check out a few eco-friendly ways to reduce your waste at Christmas so you can celebrate without worrying about the environment.
Remember the Fundamental Principles of Waste Reduction
Anyone can learn how to reduce holiday waste by starting with the three principles of all waste reduction. Reduce, reuse and recycle — it can really be that easy.
Remember that mantra as you think about how you’ll approach the holidays this year. Even if you’re already trying to live a green lifestyle, there are likely ways you can become even more eco-friendly during Christmas. Experts estimate 76% of people throw away things they could recycle instead. Something as simple as double-checking what’s in your hand before tossing it in your garbage can could significantly help the planet.
Waste reduction is also a preventive measure. Minimizing how much garbage you throw away is the most effective way to keep waste out of the environment. If you’re trying to make your holiday traditions more Earth-friendly, such efforts should become a foundational part of your seasonal plans.
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How to Reduce Holiday Waste More Sustainably
Learn how to reduce your waste at Christmas by checking out different ways to handle what you’ll need to throw out. Even the most minor changes in your trash management strategies can positively impact the planet.
1. Send Leftovers Home With Loved Ones
Whether you and your loved ones enjoy baking cookies, casseroles or a whole turkey, you’ll likely have more leftovers in your home over the holidays. Don’t forget to send your family members home with extra servings. You’ll likely prevent more food from ending up in your local landfill, which often happens with food forgotten in the back of a fridge.
Your leftovers will remain safe to eat if everyone keeps them in the fridge for three to four days after you serve the original meals. Even if it doesn’t smell foul or show signs of mold, four days is enough for bacteria to grow within the storage containers and potentially make you sick. When it passes that mark, it’s time to throw out the food.
2. Invite People Over Via the Internet
Although many people send a quick text to invite people over for holiday parties, some households prefer to send themed cards. They’re cute ways to feel extra festive, but they’re also a form of paper waste. Your guests will enjoy finding the invitations in their mailbox before throwing them out.
Create digital invitations and send them over email instead. As you learn other ways to reduce holiday waste, your efforts will add up to significant amounts of natural resources left in the environment.
3. Wrap Presents in Fabric Bags
Giving someone a gift in themed wrapping paper is a long-held holiday tradition. It’s also another way people participate in deforestation and turn trees into paper for a single use. The U.S. throws out 2.6 billion pounds of wrapping paper annually.
Prevent your home from adding to that number by wrapping gifts in fabric bags. You can still personalize the bags with fabric paint, ribbons or bows. When Christmas is over, save them to reuse next year.
4. Chop Up Your Christmas Tree
If you and your loved ones search Christmas tree farms for the perfect tree every year, you don’t necessarily have to stop that tradition to support the environment. When you finish celebrating the holiday, take your tree to the backyard and chop it up. It can double as wood and kindling for a fire pit.
You might also enjoy turning the branches into household decorations like wreaths. Of all the sustainable ways to dispose of your Christmas tree, reusing it around your home is one of the more popular.
5. Use a Temporary Composting Solution
People without firepits can still sustainably dispose of their Christmas trees if they look for a temporary composting solution. Local companies might arrange a one-time pickup and get your tree from the end of your driveway to add it to their composting facility.
You could also chop it up for your home composting bin. Yard waste and food scraps add up to 20%-30% of household garbage, but you could reduce that by starting a Christmas composting tradition.
6. Donate Your Holiday Decor
Decorating your home for the holidays is always fun. You might even look forward to updating your decor each year to match the interior decorating upgrades you finished over the last twelve months. If you have holiday decor you don’t want to keep, donate it to nearby thrift stores. You can easily reduce your waste at Christmas by dropping off decorations where people are already looking for household goods at a discount.
7. Give Your Tree to a Firehouse
Unfortunately, Christmas trees are always a fire risk. The flammable branches and trunk contribute to 210 house fires each year, which is why some firehouses accept them as donations after the holidays. They use old Christmas trees as part of their training for recruits putting out fires in fake houses.
Donating is one of the sustainable ways to dispose of your Christmas tree people sometimes forget. Contact your local fire department to see if they’re taking donations or know of a station that will accept your tree after Christmas ends.
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8. Drop Off Electronics at Recycling Centers
Electronics are often Christmas gifts. You might give your niece a new Nintendo Switch or your child a smartphone. If you know they’re throwing away older devices on Christmas day, save them for a recycling center.
Some recycling centers know how to dispose of electronics safely, which can involve repurposing old parts. Remember this tip as you determine how to reduce holiday waste this year.
9. Save Your Tissue Paper
Wrapping paper gets significant attention from people going green during Christmas. While using other means of hiding gifts is a great idea, you can also change how you use tissue paper.
A recent survey found tissue paper adds up to 53% of holiday garbage, but saving it will keep you from adding to that waste. Reuse it next Christmas or during other gift-giving occasions if it doesn’t have a holiday print.
10. Find a Diaper Recycling Program
If you have loved ones visiting with kids who still use diapers, you don’t need to send all the used ones to your local landfill. See if there’s a nearby diaper recycling program. You could drop off bags of used diapers or arrange a pickup schedule.
Some centers have machinery that separates the human waste from the diaper fibers for reuse in future diaper products. It could be your newest way to make Christmas more sustainable if you have a similar program in your town.
11. Secure Gifts With Twine
Tape is a common tool for gift wrapping. Although it’s easy to use, it’s also a form of single-use plastic waste. Avoid that this Christmas by securing your gift-wrapping materials with twine.
Twine can be eco-friendly if it uses sustainable materials. Look for a ball of twine made with jute while you’re shopping for gift-wrapping supplies. Jute is durable and biodegradable but also protects against environmental degradation while growing. You can purchase it, reuse it or compost it while knowing you’re helping the planet.
12. Keep Product Boxes for Future Gifts
Have you ever thought about keeping packaging, too? Cardboard boxes are easy to reuse. The boxes containing your niece’s new Doc Martens or your brother’s ergonomic desk chair can hold future birthday or graduation gifts.
You might even develop a bit of a prankster side with this waste management strategy. A loved one could unwrap your future present and see packaging for a new kitchen pan, only to discover their dream laptop inside.
Get creative with how you imagine reusing the various boxes to know which ones you should save. If you keep packages of different sizes, you could even reuse them to gift things as small as earrings. It depends on what’s under your Christmas tree this year.
Additional Eco-Friendly Christmas Traditions You Could Adopt
Knowing how to handle Christmas day garbage is important when trying to help the planet. Adding preventive measures to your holiday routine will bolster your efforts. Consider trying a few new traditions this year that make your home more eco-friendly before Christmas morning arrives.
1. Hang LED Lights
Some people might not think about their holiday lights creating environmental waste. However, every time you turn your string lights on, they draw power from a local electrical plant that generates carbon emissions to power your regional area.
You can shrink your home’s carbon footprint by switching to light-emitting diode (LED) holiday lights. No matter how long they’re on during the Christmas season, they’ll use 75% less energy than incandescent lights. Your home will generate less carbon dioxide waste without changing how you like to decorate during the holidays.
2. Give the Gift of Experiences
Wrapping paper rarely has more than a one-time use. It can also take tons of time to wrap every gift for the people you love if you have a big family. Save some time and protect the environment by giving the gift of an experience.
Get tickets to events or a gift card for fun things your loved ones can do. They might enjoy stopping by an axe-throwing location, a pottery-making class or a dinner cruise more than anything you could decorate with paper and tape.
3. Buy Local Products
Prevent your holiday shopping habits from making environmental pollution worse by getting your presents from local businesses. The international cargo shipping industry contributes 3% of global carbon emissions just by moving goods between countries. When you buy something made across the world, shipping methods increase that gift’s carbon footprint.
Check out nearby shops to get something made close to home. They’ll contribute minimal carbon emissions to the atmosphere because they don’t have to travel the world to reach your home. You could even selectively shop with local brands that have sustainable practices to make your gift-giving even greener.
4. Donate to Carbon-Offsetting Programs
Don’t forget about the possibility of donating to carbon-offsetting groups. The international programs take donations and turn them into funding for efforts like planting trees, cleaning the oceans or researching new technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Your personal footprint will get a bit smaller, which means your overall Christmas holiday waste will, too.
If you want to double your environmental impact, you could also minimize your household waste by requesting carbon-offsetting donations instead of presents. You’ll have much less to clean up on Christmas morning and feel empowered that you went the extra mile to help the environment.
5. Wash Your Holiday Dishes by Hand
Water waste is an unfortunate part of the holidays. If you’re hosting loved ones, you’ll likely deal with more dirty dishes and laundry than during other parts of the year. You don’t have to sacrifice your cleanliness standards to help the planet — you just have to pass on using your dishwasher occasionally.
Modern technology and industry developments decreased dishwasher water consumption by 40% from 1998 to 2014, but they still use a significant amount of water compared to washing dishes by hand. Take the power back over your household water usage during the holidays by grabbing a sponge and some dish soap. You can turn the water off while you scrub to prevent your wintertime water waste from adding up.
Use Sustainable Ideas to Reduce Your Waste at Christmas
Reducing your waste at Christmas is possible if you keep the three fundamental principles of waste reduction in mind. Reduce your household waste, recycle what you can and find ways to reuse things around your home. If you try new strategies that prevent waste creation and manage it more sustainably, you’ll shrink your home’s environmental footprint without changing how you love celebrating the holidays.
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