Dreaming of a green Christmas

Have an eco-friendly yuletide

CARDS GIFTS

One in 10 people say they have given up gift-giving this year, saving themselves around £105, while 45% of us have asked Santa for an eco-friendly gift.

“Pre-loved” gifts are all the rage so check out charity shops or sites like Etsy or Gumtree.

A “Secret Santa” can keep the number of presents down.

Give recyclable pressies such as bamboo toothbrushes, or make cookies or fudge or write a “Gift Cheque” pledging to do something nice for a friend.

WRAPPING PARTY FROCKS

Get your festive outfits from buy-and-sell clothing apps or charity or vintage shops. Major retailers now stock sustainable clothing lines, too.

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure, so instead of trawling the aisles for another glitter-laden party outfit, aiding one of the most polluting industries on the planet, why not raid friends’ wardrobes, or do a clothes swap?

Every Christmas, the amount of festive waste produced in the UK increases by 30%. Last year we threw away 100,000 tonnes of plastic packaging, 227,000 miles of wrapping paper and six million trees.

Our crimes against festive food are even more shocking,

ENERGY

with two million turkeys, 74million mince pies and 17.2million sprouts in the bin.

More than half of us say we are making an effort to reduce our carbon footprint with an eco-friendly yuletide.

So if you’re dreaming of a green Christmas but don’t know where to start, here are a few top tips.

DECORATIONS TREES

Six million trees are thrown out after Christmas, creating more than 9,000 tonnes of additional waste. That’s about five times the weight of the London Eye.

If you want to be sure yours was grown sustainably, look for the Fsc-certification logo. If you want one certified as organic and pesticide-free, look for Soil Association approval.

Many garden centres offer a Christmas tree hire service, delivering and collecting it, then replanting it. Or buy a tree with roots to grow in your own garden and use again next year.

Far more trees get recycled now and most councils have sites to leave them at. They are shredded and used as mulch on plants or made into compost.

FOOD and DRINK TRAVEL

Make

Christmas travel greener by sharing shopping trips and lifts with friends and family. Use public transport or shop online and get bulk deliveries.

Around 1.5 billion Christmas cards will end up in the bin, so why not send e-cards or buy paper ones like those sold by the National Trust. Better still, make your own from recyclable materials that you already have. But avoid glitter. It’s a microplastic which ends up in the sea killing marine life and working its way up the food chain to our own plates. GREEN Santa on a 1910 card from Germany Use LED lights with timers to save energy and hand-crafted decorations that are fun to create with the kids. Edible decorations are also easily disposed of! Choose Christmas crackers without glitter or plastic toys.

Paper waste over the Christmas period is equivalent to up to 12 million litres of biofuel, enough to power a bus to go to the moon 20 times. And the wrapping paper we chuck out could parcel up the entire island of Jersey. Choose re-usable gift bags or use newspaper, magazines, old maps or brown paper decorated with string, or old ribbon, rather than sticky tape. Forage for holly, pine cones or leaves as embellishments. The average family spends a fifth more on energy over Christmas, upping the heating by 3.84C, having the telly on for four extra hours a day and the oven for four hours per week. It adds up to £499million of energy used across the UK. If every household started saving on fuel and got a smart meter it could save enough energy to power more than 40 million strings of Christmas lights, says Robert Cheesewright of Smart Energy GB. According to the Soil Association, “food is the single most important, everyday way for people to reduce their own environmental impact”. This year some 3.1 million of us are opting for a meat-free Christmas dinner. If you cannot get past the meat craving, chose organic and free-range and visit local fruit and vegetable or farm shops for package-free goods This Christmas we will cook around 6,711 tonnes of fresh turkey and 12,472 tonnes of frozen turkey. That is almost 20,000 tonnes of meat – but a lot will get thrown away. If you end up over-catering donate leftovers to a local foodbank or soup kitchen.