Environment Round-up: Christmas

We’re getting closer to Christmas and that means people are buying presents, lights and food.  It sounds like a wonderful festive time, but unfortunately it is not great for the environment due to the extra energy used and waste produced (last year The Guardian reported we produce 300m tonnes of waste at Christmas each year). However, it is possible to reduce the negative environmental impact without impacting on the enjoyment of the Christmas season, and of course BritMums members are here to help.

There are many aspects to the Christmas season and in her post Have an environt-merry Christmas Amie at Finding our Feet discusses how to reduce the impact of wrapping present, cards, lights, shopping and Christmas trees. Vi at Dancing in my Wellies also has a number of tips including gifts, wrapping presents, waste, decorating and reusing items in her post A Greener Christmas – 5 easy tips. Rosie at A Green and Rosie Life has 7 tips to reduce Christmas Waste including wrapping paper, cards, foods and presents.

Liz at Me and my Shadow considers whether it is better for the environment to have a real or fake Christmas tree in her post How Green is my Christmas Tree. I’ve written about my suggestions for reducing the energy use of Christmas lights and also my concern about the difficulty in recycling fancy wrapping paper, which is why we usually make our own wrapping paper.   

And if you’re looking for gift ideas Rosie at A Green and Rosie Life has 7 Green Christmas Present Ideas and Zoe at Eco Thrifty Living has 6 Eco Friendly Gifts for him this Christmas.

I hope these posts inspire you to reduce your environmental impact this Christmas. If so please let me know in the comments below or leave a comment on the relevant post to encourage the blogger to keep sharing their environmental posts. Plus don’t forget to let me know what topics you want to know more about or to send me links to your posts for the next round-up via my blog or tweet me @katedavis.