Enjoy the festive season guilt-free with these 4 sustainable tips

Planning an Eco-friendly Feast

Food is a huge part of the holiday season, but we also tend to waste a lot when preparing large amounts of food. Whilst there are tons of creative ideas to use up the leftovers, there are more substantial ways to eat sustainably and well during the holidays. Try sourcing seasonal ingredients from your local market and opt for organic ingredients, which is a great way for you to lower your carbon footprint by not having to import any ingredients.

Another tip is to find ethical producers for any cuts of meat that you’ll be serving during your holiday feast. You’re not only using less packaging by shopping from local butchers, but you can feel confident that you didn’t support any intensive farming practices. Enjoy a fantastic feast with fresh and sustainable ingredients!

Hosting a Regift Exchange

Remember the bottle of perfume or the pair of socks sitting at the bottom of your drawer since you received it last holiday season? It’s totally fine to not like every gift you receive. Instead of leaving it out of sight and out of mind until the next time you clean your drawer, why not gift it to someone else? Regifting shouldn’t be shameful, it’s a great way to make sure things don’t go to waste, especially when you know someone in your life that will show it more love than you ever will. Make it a trend and host a regift exchange this holiday season! This is not only eco-friendly, but it will also be budget friendly too. Challenge your friends and family to really put thought into choosing what to regift by setting a theme or assigning them a recipient beforehand. And speaking of gifts…

Get Creative with Gift Wrapping

Gift-giving is a love language for a reason, it’s an amazing way to show people that we care. However, we are producing more waste than ever with the large amount of wrapping and packaging we go through during the holidays. Glittered, laminated, or embossed wrapping paper and giftbags are unrecyclable, and end up in landfills after we discard them. While there are more and more sustainable wrapping options available, it seems counter-intuitive to buy more packaging. Get creative and innovative with green gift-wrapping this holiday season! Reuse tea towels, leftover fabric, or even pretty scarves (that you don’t wear anymore) as makeshift furoshiki wraps. Repurpose plain paper bags or gift bags that you’ve saved up over the years. Stain old newspapers with tea bags for some vintage looking wrapping paper. The possibilities are truly endless.

Get creative with eco-friendly decorations

Tap into your creative side this festive season and do your part to help the environment. Take the time to look around your home to see what items you no longer use or find ones which have a special meaning you can turn into Christmas decorations. Get creative with recycled materials – make snowflake cutouts with recycled paper, turn old CDs into festive baubles, reuse a family heirloom – instead of buying items harmful to the environment which you’ll only use once a year. Look for items made from brass, glass, and wood. If you’re feeling really creative, you can make your own Christmas wreath made of paper and twine with foraged berries, holly, and mistletoe.     

The holidays are a great opportunity to spend some quality time with friends and family. But while we reflect on the past year, we should also be mindful of our impact on the environment when we celebrate. #ItsInOurHands to take steps to ensure that we spend our holiday season without putting the future of our planet in jeopardy.