December 2003
I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas!
Christmas can be a huge expense for everybody but every year the environment will also pay the price.
Each year in Britain we generate over two million tonnes of waste at Christmas. Once the presents have been unwrapped we bury five and a half million Christmas trees, over twenty million bottles, over two million aluminium cans and over 80 square kilometres of wrapping paper.
The best resolution you can make this year is to make your Christmas environmentally- friendly.
Here are some 'Green Christmas' tips:
- Buy an artificial Christmas tree which can be re-used next year
- If you do buy a real Christmas tree, obtain it from a sustainable source and either recycle it after Christmas or plant it in the garden if it has roots
- Use low-wattage or LED Christmas lights and reduce the number of them
- Send on-line Christmas cards
- Buy organic turkey and vegetables for your Christmas dinner
- Compost food waste, especially that mountain of left-over sprouts!
- Feed garden birds with nuts and waste fat from cooking
- Try growing your own holly and mistletoe. Mistletoe is a UK endangered species and provides winter food for birds
- Wrap presents in comic paper or the weekend supplements of newspapers and recycle it on Boxing Day
- Give re-usable presents rather than disposable ones, such as electric razors and pens with refills
- Use old Christmas cards to make tags
- Buy rechargeable batteries for toys
- Encourage children to make decorations out of unwanted household materials, rather than buying new ones
- When shopping, use re-usable bags and say no to unwanted bags
- Wrap-up in auntie's knitted jumper to save using energy for heating
- After watching your favourite Christmas films and before you hang up your stocking and leave a glass of sherry and mince pie for Santa, switch off your TV rather than leaving it on standby
- Switch off your Christmas tree lights before you go to bed at night
- Leave a note for Santa to close the damper on the fireplace when he goes back up the chimney!
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