How to have a sustainable Christmas

Christmas Twine
Christmas Wrapping Paper
Christmas

Each Christmas, the UK generates the equivalent weight of 3.3million emperor penguins in plastic waste!

  • 1 billion cards will end up in the bin/trash….
  • 27,000 miles of wrapping paper is used every year in the U.K, most of which can’t be recycled due to glitter or metallic finishes….
  • AND 250,000 tonnes of food waste is generated every Christmas in the U.K alone! (Equivalent to 2 million turkeys)

On top of that, 81 million unwanted Christmas presents are given each year… with 10% of these ending up in landfill!

With these staggering figures,  it’s easy to find alternatives to our current habits. Particularly with this year being so difficult to get out & about to see anyone. If you are buying this year, #buybetterfortheplanet.

Some ideas that we’ve used year by year are:

  1. Add more plant based foods into your Christmas Dinner. It may feel different the first time you do it, but honestly, we’ve never looked back. Even my other half has scrapped the turkey & opted for vegan alternatives since we’ve been together. He says he feels stronger & healthier.

2. Collect pine cones and other items to use for decorations. We even used a gone off orange this year & cooked slices in the oven for 2 hours. After they were hard, we removed and added a hole in each one to use as fragrant tags on our presents.

3. Use recycled paper cards & wrapping paper. It sounds simple, but that one swap this year could at least mean that your paper is recyclable and / or compostable. Save as much from last year as possible to reuse or use fabric & create Furoshiki

4. Finally, buy consciously. Does the retailer that you are buying from share the values that are important to you? Do they ensure they meet standards across the market. Are they ethical in everything that they do?

 

Christmas

Changing your habits can be hard to start with, but once you’ve made that leap, the rest really follows quite easily. You don’t need to give up anything, just try to think more consciously.

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