To wonder if anyone is thinkingbof a more eco friendly Christmas this year?

[malificent7]

As opposed to the plastic tat fest it has become?
Also hoping it will be cheaper than normal. Any plans ....put them here. I might get a 2nd hand fake tree if i can as my old one is broken.

errr- - not so much tree because its tradition that we buy one if we are in the country (which we are this year) but present wise - i only ever buy sustainable wooden toys for the kids and if anyone asked me what to get the kids, i would recommend wooden toys or sustainable clothing. I also use sustainable wrapping paper if that helps?

Hmm yes but I'm not going to martyr myself and make it grim .

My tree is a fake one , no new decorations this year because I have two new cats who I suspect will wreck things and risk damaging their paws .

DD,DH and I are vegetarian so our ethical impact is low

DD likes an Advent calender but I make it myself . This year I'm using wooden numbers and I'm going to re-use a fabric bag each day . There will be plastic but the products are Cruelty Free .

I don't buy excesses of food and drink, only DS eats meat . No huge amounts to give the 'leftovers'.

I will wrap , but the presents are tiny ( cash for DS ) so minimal paper .

But there's no point doing it for Christmas unless it is the whole year .

I do rectcle at home but it is amazing how much paper and plastic there is , it cannot be eliminated .

I’ve had the same two fake trees for years. Will be using again this year.

Last year I made lots of fabric gift bags from old shirts bought in a charity shop. Planning on the same this year.

Planning to buy as much as possible locally.

I don’t do cards at all.

Might, might make some gifts myself (I can knit, sew, paint, draw) if I start early enough.

And I am generally just giving less. To dc in particular. They got more than they needed last year. Silly stocking fillers that were just to make the stocking look fuller. Not necessary. Quality over quantity this year.

Yes I am going to make an effort to be more eco-friendly this year. I am already in the process of eliminating one-use plastic in the house. Guests will receive a water bottle on arrival and will be filling it themselves from the tap to eliminate plastic bottles. Condiments will be bought in glass bottles where possible.

Family presents are going to be largely home-made (using up my fabric stash) and we are cutting down on them massively.

I don't know if this is sufficiently eco-friendly or not, but where I live, trees are taken away and turned in to compost for local use. All of our decorations are over 25 years old and still going strong! I pack them away very carefully each year!

Most of our food will be locally sourced. We will be eating meat but in much smaller quantities than previous years and with a known provenance.

The rest of the food that isn't local (citrus and tropical fruit and dates for example) we will buy be buying from a Syrian shop and although that doesn't help the environment it will help the Syrian owner's family to whom he sends money.

Wrapping will be sustainable too and no glitter anywhere!

We already produce our own walnuts and cob nuts and apple juice. And we will be giving away our own preserves as work presents. We are going to try and focus on eliminating food waste and just generally consuming less. And foraging more (we live in a very rural location) andare already part of a local surplus food exchange group.

We'll also be travelling less than usual.

I'll be very interested to read about what everyone else is doing on here. I'm sure we can do loads more!

@Eeyoreshouse Guests will receive a water bottle on arrival and will be filling it themselves from the tap to eliminate plastic bottles.

Would they just not use a glass?!?!?

Good idea for a thread!

• We're vegan so that helps.

• I'm thinking of buying some reusable gift paper. This stuff looks nice www.wragwrap.com/

• DS (will be 1 yo) will get minimal presents second-hand. He's not going to remember this Christmas so I don't want to go overboard.

• We'll travel by train to visit family.

Would they just not use a glass?!?!?

At night time a bottle of water is safer , won't get spilled (I know if I'm in a strange house looking for the bedside lamp I'll knock things over . Same with carrying a glass )

We never really go overboard with it but this year I'm not getting any)filler presents for the DC.

Easy solution - just act as if you're poor OP.

Less money means less presents, less food and less waste, less travelling etc.

HTH

Brexit should really help with all this. Shortages of petrol, food and everything else. Lots of people losing their jobs should help reduce consumption too.

I've already told the relevant people that I'm doing a present amnesty - I won't be giving or receiving any.

You know there’s a whole Christmas thread on MN.

Yes, without going too much overboard.

Tree decorations are all natural materials (e.g. I collect cones all year around and paint them, make straw figures etc), many gifts homemade consumables, clothing or items with actual use - no tat.

My family cook, but leftovers are used up in sandwiches and meat loaves. Nothing goes to waste.

Wrapping is minimal and the paper recyclable.

But then, this has been our Christmas for many years.

I like the idea of reusable sacks instead of wrapping paper. I’m wondering particularly about foil paper and is that even worse than regular wrapping paper.

We already have many present bags as we reuse those too.

I wonder about the fake Xmas tree vs live tree. As there are local Xmas tree farms, surely that’s more environmentally friendly than Fake trees? Perhaps encouraging potted trees that could be bright indoors each year for Xmas? (Similar fashion to orangeries in Olden days - trees brought out and brought in). I wonder if there’s a market for this for people in flats - delivery/collection service of a live tree potted tree.

I’d personally like less packaging for my Xmas dinner grocery shop.

The last few years we have been working on this. We have a DD (she will be 3 this Christmas) and all her presents have been wooden toys, books, experiences - nothing plastic. In fact I can't think of a single plastic toy she owns which wasn't second hand.
For other people we only buy for the kids and for our parents so no millions of £5-10 tatty presents for siblings. In the past we would have been handing out body shop gift sets etc.
We made our own wrapping paper last year using ink stamps on brown parcel paper which came out really well.
Food wise we will not be having a veggie or vegan Christmas but we have got much better at only cooking the food we need and not having loads of snacks, cheese and biscuits etc.
DD has a reusable advent calendar. DH and I don't have advent calendars.

Oh and we have a real tree but I dont know if that is more or less environmentally friendly.

I stopped buying wrapping paper and sellotape for most family presents last year. I bought Christmas boxes and filled those with the presents and anything that needs wrapping I use the many rolls left over from previous years. In years past I would buy more wrapping paper so everything matched.

Ill use the same plastic tree and decorations Ive used for the last 10 years.

9 year old DD is quite eco aware and asks for no plastic toys. Makes things tricky but we have so much already. We dig out the old board games (that only ever really get played at Christmas) and play with them instead of buying new ones etc.

We have a fake tree we found in the attic of the house when we moved in. decorations are either home made and/or reused every year.
Minimal presents: 1 per family unit, so five per child (2 kids).
Glass and tablewear is (obviously) reusable, so our normal plates etc.
wrapping paper is brown paper that the kids decorate with stamps
leftover food gets eaten, not thrown out (kind of sad that is something worth stating)

Yes definitely. Just like every other year.

I gave my late teens/young adult DDs things like a Mooncup, reusable make up pads, an eco egg thing for the washing machine etc last year but I'm struggling to come up with more ideas for this year.

We try to every year as I can’t stand rubbish or plastic tat!

Advent calendar is a fabric one with pockets. Each day has a slip of paper with an activity on for things for us to do as a family and I try to change them every year as dc have got older.

Stockings have stuff that we would buy for them during the year anyway - socks, pants, toiletries, book, sweets, game, cd etc so none of that is tat to be thrown away the next day.

All food gets eaten over the holiday so not much waste. We don’t tend to go overboard as although I would probably want to buy far too much my sil is much stricter and really good at keeping it reined in!

Reusing our fake tree, searching out wrapping paper/ cards that’s not covered in non recyclable glitter. We’re cutting down on presents as well, making hampers from cardboard boxes, less to wrap. We’re probably use this opportunity to cut down on the sheer amount of tat we’ve collected over the years as well.

@Eeyoreshouse Guests will receive a water bottle on arrival and will be filling it themselves from the tap to eliminate plastic bottles

Would they just not use a glass?!?!?

Sorry! Should have been more explicit! Meant for all excursions and trips out (and yes beside bed).

We've stopped doing cards, except for elderly/lonely people that we know.

We've stopped Adult presents and all go on a trip out to a Christmas Market or the like.

Luckily being poor, we don't have food wastage and unnecessary gift buying.

I generally do what I think is reasonable and practical to be eco-friendly all the year round, so I expect I’ll do the same at Christmas, but I won’t be a) a joyless nob about it or b) banging on about it to my guests. My Christmas dinner won’t be vegan and I won’t be putting a mooncup in anyone’s cracker but equally I won’t be chucking plastic glitter over anything or buying decorations made of palm oil and panda fur.

I don’t have any kids and I can’t drive to be honest those things alone probably green up my Christmas quite a bit. The number of short-lived plastic items on the Christmas lists of my DP and parents are likely to be quite low I would think.