Each year, the Christmas season takes an ever-growing toll on our planet. Between Thanksgiving and New Year each year, American waste increases by 25%, amounting to about 25 million extra tons of garbage produced. With a constantly increasing strain on our environment, we must do what we can to lessen this burden.
Use these nine ideas to help you have a green Christmas in 2024, without giving up your favorite Christmas traditions.
Make Your Own Decorations
It should come as no surprise that the material, manufacturing, and transport of Christmas decorations each year contributes heavily to emissions and waste. Even though most people have reusable decorations they bring out each year, you often have to replace some damaged ones or might just want a fresh look. Also, depending on your decor, certain things like table arrangements and holiday candles must be purchased yearly.
Try making your own vintage Christmas decorations this year to help eliminate the environmental and monetary cost of buying new decorations. Get creative with anything you have around the house, including old decorations you can repurpose and even dehydrated fruit.
For more inspiration, use this as an opportunity to explore the winter wonderland and do some foraging for craft supplies. Schedule some outdoor Christmas activities to get the whole family outside.
Mother Nature has countless beautiful pieces you can incorporate into your decorations. Include branches, boughs, and pinecones for wreath-making.
Want to get the whole family involved? Try these Pioneer Christmas Crafts For Kids.
Potted Christmas Tree
Each year, Americans cut down, use, and throw out over 15 million Christmas trees. Many people try to avoid wasting a live tree by purchasing a plastic, reusable tree. While these might seem easy to make your Christmas more eco-friendly, fake trees aren't as good for the environment as you may assume.
Plastic trees require manufacturing, harmful materials, and transportation from their manufacturing place to your front door. These factors add to a significant environmental toll for a single fake tree.
In addition, most people tend to throw out a fake tree after it looks old and worn. Although people expect to use a fake tree forever, they usually only make it several years before being disposed of and replaced. The issue then becomes what to do with the old plastic tree. Unfortunately, they almost always end up in a landfill.
Instead, try starting your own potted Christmas tree. They’re a smaller, sustainable option that you can eventually plant outdoors after a few years in the pot. Learn more about how to care for potted Christmas trees here.
Give Gifts From Your Fall Harvest
Buying new gifts every year for family and friends takes a toll on the planet that can be drastically reduced by changing our thoughts on gift-giving. Unless you buy all of your gifts from local artisans using local materials, your gifts will likely negatively impact the environment. Unfortunately, that’s just a reality of modern-day supply chains.
Still, you should make an effort to buy gifts from local artisans and craftsmen. Despite what people say about the disappearing small businesses of America, you can still find many unique and high-quality gifts made by local entrepreneurs if you do a little digging. Use online marketplaces like Etsy or Facebook Marketplace to search your area or ask community members for suggestions.
While it can be difficult to eliminate every environmental issue from the holiday supply chain, we can do our best to reduce our own contribution. Instead of buying gifts this season, try making your own gifts from your fall harvest. Whether you make baked goods, crafts, preservatives, or something else unique, everyone appreciates a thoughtful, hand-made gift.
Use Recycled or Reusable Gift Wrapping
In 2023, Americans spent an estimated $2.6 billion on gift-wrapping, including 38,000 miles of ribbon. I don’t know about you, but that’s much higher than I would have guessed, especially considering these materials are almost immediately torn open and thrown away. This wasteful trend continues year after year, although many people have started to try using alternative wrapping methods.
Fortunately, many options are available to make gift-wrapping one of your green Christmas initiatives. Try using reusable cloth gift bags, or biodegradable, recycled wrapping paper.
If you want to avoid buying a solution, reuse any wrapping paper or bags you have left from last Christmas. Old newspapers or butcher's papers work just fine as well.
If you're giving Christmas gifts from your kitchen, here's another idea. Try making beeswax wraps using Christmas fabric.
If you have space, keep any ribbons or other wrapping decorations to reuse next year. Open gifts carefully without tearing everything, and you’ll be able to reuse the wrapping for a couple of years.
Lastly, if you have to use store-bought wrapping paper, avoid purchasing foil-sided, glittery, or metallic-style papers. Many of these can’t be recycled due to the extra contaminants in the paper.
Reduce Your Holiday Food Waste
While most people focus on the waste created by Christmas packaging and decorations, they forget how much food gets thrown out over the holidays. At every holiday party and dinner, there seems to be an endless food supply.
As a host, this is exactly how you want a guest to feel. On the other hand, quite a bit of this ends up in the garbage (or compost) by the end of the holidays.
This might sound simple, but smaller plates will also help reduce the amount of waste. People will be forced to take a smaller amount of food each time, filling the plate with an amount they're more likely to finish.
Get creative with any leftovers and include them in different recipes so they don’t go to waste. Soups and stews are some of the easiest and most common ways to get the most out of your holiday leftovers.
And if you're like my mom, you can turn almost any leftovers into a casserole. Also, depending on local organizations, you may be able to donate extra meals to homeless shelters or food banks. For moe creative ideas, visit our sister site, Recipes From Leftovers.
Reusable Holiday Crackers
If your family uses Christmas crackers before your holiday meal, try making your own reusable ones this year. These one-time-use holiday traditions produce a lot of garbage and packaging that can be easily avoided.
When my family used disposable crackers, one of us would be responsible for collecting the garbage from the crackers. It easily filled up a small garbage bag. That's so much unnecessary waste.
For a green Christmas, make your own personalized holiday crackers at home. This gives you a chance to put your own homemade gifts or surprises inside the crackers, adding a personal touch to the holiday tradition. If you want to go a step further, try making reusable crackers to reduce your holiday waste for years to come.
If this seems like too much work, you still have some green options. You’ll find lots of recycled or recyclable cracker options as well. In fact, Amazon now carries fully recyclable Christmas crackers.
Use Christmas Light Substitutes
If you have an off-grid battery system, you might not have the luxury of powering Christmas lights every evening. Even if you’re connected to a power grid, Christmas lights represent one of the single greatest wastes of energy each year. Think about how much extra power people consume through December while heating their homes and powering hundreds of extra tiny lights.
In fact, American Christmas lights consume 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours each year. That adds up to almost $645 million of extra energy costs for Americans during the month of December alone.
According to the same study, this extra energy consumption adds 2 million tons of CO2 annually to the atmosphere. While energy-efficient LED lights will help reduce this burden, they won’t fully eliminate the problem.
To continue your green Christmas revolution, get solar-powered Christmas lights to eliminate your reliance on traditional power sources. While this will help lower your energy consumption, acquiring solar-powered lights still takes manufacturing, materials, and transport. To make your Christmas as green as possible, try using substitutes for lights.
Some popular alternatives to Christmas lights have been cranberry or popcorn strings to decorate outdoor and indoor trees. You can also source seasonal materials from around your property to help decorate your home and yard without using lights.
Green Christmas Meals
Another easy way to have a green Christmas is by getting as much of your holiday food from local farmers as possible. The millions of turkeys, hams, potatoes, and other holiday-related foods produced each year have a massive impact on emissions.
This food requires transportation and preservation from a farm to a store, your cart, and your table. You can help reduce the emissions caused by this supply chain by buying as much locally sourced food as possible.
Research farmers in your area online from whom you can buy directly. Depending on your state, there might even be farmers’ markets open where you can find most of your local food options.
Even though the fall harvest will be long gone by the time Christmas arrives, many farmers or local homesteaders will have a variety of preservatives you can use in your locally sourced holiday meal.
If you have space, try raising your own turkeys or chickens to supply your homegrown holiday bird. It might be too late in the season to start raising them now, but you can always get planning for next Christmas!
Family Nature Activities
The winter months make spending as much time outdoors as you want difficult. This seems especially problematic around Christmas when everyone eats too much, drinks too much, and sits inside to watch holiday movies and shows.
As an alternative to the television screen, try to get your family outside for some outdoor Christmas activities. This will reduce your power usage and improve everyone’s health and mood.
Get the whole family together for a hike or walk before dinner’s served. Make sure to include the grandparents and little ones — bring a sled or baby carrier if needed. And don't forget to pack some handmade hand warmers for everyone.
The fresh air will help sharpen appetites while allowing people to stretch and exercise during a commonly sedentary time. Also, if you’re like me and want a quiet, empty house while you cook, it’s a great excuse to get everyone out of the house.
And while the family enjoys a nature walk, why not get them involved helping you forage for extra ingredients or decorations?
Start a Green Christmas Tradition
Everyone has numerous Christmas traditions that their family appreciates year after year, like our simple pioneer Christmas activities. But with humans’ ever-growing impact on the planet, it’s time to start thinking about transforming some of these ideas into new green Christmas traditions that limit their impact on our earth. This way, our descendants can continue to appreciate these traditions long after we’ve gone.
It may be difficult to change your entire Christmas all at once, but if you incorporate just a few of these green Christmas ideas into your plans each year, you’ll make a difference. After just a few years, your holidays will be as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible.
Do you have any specific green Christmas traditions we haven’t mentioned here? Let us know in the comments below.
