Our Christmas Tree
“I’m dreaming of a Green Christmas” by Diane Tegarden
There are lots of ways to enjoy the holidays without leaving a negative impact on our fragile environment. Here are ten fun tips on Greening your Christmas this year:
1. Buy a live tree that you can decorate this year, and then plant in your backyard with your kids, and watch it grow as they grow! We have a Norfolk Pine and another two pine trees in our yard that were originally Christmas trees. Each tree lasts about three years in its pot, so you can use it over and over again before planting it.
2. Donate your live tree to an organization in your community that’s dedicated to planting trees, like the Arbor Day Society or the Boy/Girl Scouts.
Tip: If you do buy a cut tree, remember, the city can’t recycle them into compost if they have: flocking, tinsel “icicles” or Christmas ornaments still attached to them. Remove all decorations and get them on the curb in time to be recycled by your local waste department after Christmas.
3. Send your gifts in festively decorated baskets that can be wrapped in colored cellophane. This will save buying a mountain of wrapping paper that will become trash in an instant. The baskets can be reused again for gifts the next year!
4. If you save Christmas cards like I do, you may not want to throw them away, and can’t figure out how to reuse them. Here’s a tip: you can tape them onto your gift boxes, creating colorful, original wrapped gifts, without using wrapping paper.
5. Have fun with the kids by using your computer’s printer/scanner/copier to make your own wrapping paper. Lay out your old Christmas cards in a fanciful arrangement and copy them, then use the sheets of homemade wrapping paper for the smaller gifts.
6. If you save beautiful old calendars and just can’t bear to part with them, use the pages to wrap smaller gifts, or you can tape several pages together for the medium sized gifts.
7. For larger gifts, you can simply use a huge bow, or attach tree trimmings and pine cones decoratively to the gifts.
8. Using LED Christmas lights can save you money on your electric bill, while reducing pollution from the added electrical energy generated at Christmas just from outdoor lighting alone. Retail hardware stores countrywide are now offering these lightweight, low-cost alternatives to the energy guzzling traditional lighting.
9. Solar power your Christmas lighting display this year with a small modular system that is directly connected to your Christmas lighting. (This will only power your Christmas lighting display; it will not generate power for your whole house, so it costs much less that a full home system.) Yippee! Imagine reducing your energy bills at Christmastime!!
10. Buy your gifts from eco-friendly vendors, for example; companies that sell products made from recycled materials; companies whose practices are Earth friendly, like buying fair trade goods; companies whose track record for treating their employees, especially women and minorities, with respect and equanimity.
More and more, the terms “eco-friendly” and “people-friendly” are meant to convey care for the same things; all the living creatures of the world, be they plants, animals or people. This attitude will allow us to see the entire ecosystem of the Earth as a whole, and perhaps, be able to begin to heal it as a whole, including its people.
Bright Blessings,
Diane T. and furfamily
