Have a Green Christmas!

You might be already organizing your Christmas eve with friends and family. This is usually a very busy time of the year and with so much to think about we tend to do it automatically, forgetting times are changing and the need to be a little more concerned of our environmental impact. This year, our challenge is to try to have an eco-friendlier Christmas. Are you in?

If you have no idea from where to start, we have been giving some tips on our blog but the most important step is to plan the festivities already in a way that reduce your environment impact is your first priority. The planning usually starts with presents for our beloved ones. We give you some ideas on how to make your own presents here, and we insist: giving homemade and thoughtful presents are a great option to turn our season greener.

• Decorations: To decorate your place for Christmas, use your creativity and choose natural plants or biodegradable ornaments. Natural flowers are a cozy charm. Don’t use plastic ornaments or at least reuse from previous years, and don't replace them anymore! Rustic decorations with natural garlands, milk carton stars, branches and pine cones are original and fun options to make at home.
• Food: On Christmas Eve there’s always lots of food. Making your own Christmas dinner and desserts are the best way to make your holidays less wasteful. The Christmas fast dishes come with a lot of one-use plastic. Instead, plan ahead and share with your family and friends what each one will prepare for dinner. It’s a lot of fun and will make your dinner filled with love. After all, food is affection and it's what remains in our memory.

Remember to don’t make more food than necessary: stick to your Christmas grocery list after calculating by how many people will come for dinner. But if it happens, share the leftovers with your loved ones, keep it in the freezer in glass containers for the next days or you can make some new recipes out of the leftovers. If there are dried goods or tins left over, a good option is to do a quick research and find some food bank or associations who distribute food to homeless people or to families in need in your city.

Avoid plastic cups, plates and tableware. Use your dishes and make the dish washing a fun memory of the evening instead of just disposing of everything just because cleaning sometimes is seen as a burden. The plastics you can’t avoid, don’t forget to take it to recycling and dispose it correctly. Single-use plastic are one of the worst causes of pollution. The good news is that some countries are banning some of these plastics. In Germany, for example, since July of this year, certain single-use plastics are no longer marketed. However, before banishment, up to 20% of trash collected in public spaces were of single-use plastic.

Christmas is a good opportunity to set an example to the ones around us and to challenge ourselves to do better. Peace and love start within and our individual choices have greater impact then we can imagine.

This Christmas think about your environmental impact first. After all, is there a better way to think about everyone?