Green Christmas - A Complete Guide To An EcoFriendly Christmas

This is the index page for a series of hubs on this topic. below you will find a summary of each topic in the series, and a link to a detailed hub on each area. You'll find everything you need for a ecologically friendly Christmas, and some facts that might make you think twice about your celebrations!

Why?

We all know Christmas is an expensive time of year. For the planet, it's an orgy of environmental-abuse.

BUT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO FEEL GUILTY. We can all make small changes, and every change you make will reduce your contribution to this disasterfest, and make your Christmas more Earth-friendly. There are so many PRACTICAL suggestions in these Green Christmas hubs that everyone can do something, even if it's just one thing this year.

I have no affiliation to any of the recommended links unless you purchase from the shown Amazon or eBay items. We all have to make a living and I make mine writing.. but I believe these links are doing good things for the environment, and I figure they deserve all the profit they make doing it.

Christmas is about children. And they need the world to be here next year - year after year. Every little bit you can do to make ecofriendly Christmas choices guarantees them more Christmasses to come.

A living tree is carbon neutral, a wildlife habitat and a naturally renewable resource.

Visit the Green Christmas Trees hub here, where you'll find out everything you need to know about all kinds of real, cut, uncut, organic, artificial, rented and recycled Christmas trees!

Do you live in an area where the house with the most lights is the 'best'. Shame on you! The cost of electricity goes way beyond your post-Christms holiday utility bill. Electricity drains natural resources and costs the planet dearly. I'm not advocating Scrogge-like displays (but candles are an idea...) just think about your lights.

In general lighting accounts for 15% of household electricity, and Christmas tree lights left on for 10 hours a day over the 12 days of Christmas produce enough carbon dioxide to inflate 12 balloons!

LEDs (light-emitting diodes) instead of incandescent bulbs may be more expensive, but they last much longer and use 80% to 90% less power than conventional mini bulbs. They pay for themselves very quickly.

Visit the Green Christmas Lights hub, to find out how to have eco-friendly lights this year!

Do the folks on your list really need more stuff? If not, skip the store-bought presents and give Green Gifts instead this Christnmas. Ecofriendly Christmas gifts are easily obtained, and make great an often unusual ideas.

Look for locally made gifts. Consider also Gifts from recycled materials, 'battery-free' gifts, 're-gifting' - for a complete guide to environmentally friendly Green Christmas Gift choices (and some great links for shopping) visit the Green Christmas Gifts Hub:

Half of the paper America consumes each year is used for wrapping and decorating consumer products. (Source: The Recycler's Handbook, 1990) In the US, we produce over 4 million tons of trash from gift wrap and shopping bags EVERY YEAR. In Canada, it's about 545,00 tons.

WAKE UP PEOPLE! If everyone wrapped just three gifts in reused paper or fabric you would save it would save enough paper to cover a small country!

For a complete guide to Environmentally friendly wrapping choices and helpful links, how to videos etc for this Green Christmas, visit the Green Christmas wrapping hub.

Green Christmas decorations doesn't mean festooning your house in green! Inventive options such as homemade decorations, biodegradable decorations, and a whole range of exofriendly Christmas decorations are on offer.

Consider natural decorations - after all this is where the decorating tradition started, with good old red berries, green leaves and white mistletoe, apples, oranges and nuts!

Edible items are good looking too, just visit the Green Christmas decorations hub for videos and ideas on how to have Green Christmas decorations in your home. It's fun making them, and if you prefer to buy you'll find plenty of useful links.

Green Christmas dinners doesn't mean only easting sprouts and peas! There are ways to be greener with what you eat this holiday other than the colour.

Consider that the average food in the US travels 1500 miles to get to your table. That means your Christmas turkey could have chalked up a LOT of air miles!

Visit the Green Christmas dinners hub for ideas about how small choices can add your bit to an environmentally better Christmas holiday. Not a sprout in sight, I promise!

A great way to conserve energy and electricity: burn candles. And it's atmospheric! But toss out any old candles—they may still have lead wicks, which are toxic when burned and were banned in the U.S. only as recently as October 2003 (cpsc.gov has information). Have you tried soy, vegetable wax or beeswax? All are renewable and biodegradable materials and better for the environment than paraffin wax candles, which are petroleum based.

Visit the Green Christmas Candles hub for the full story on ecologically friendly candles this Christmas.

Each year we send billions of Christmas cards. Literally. 2 Billion in the Uk alone and hey're a tiny island! That's an enormous amount of paper, trees, fuel on delivery and potential landfill unless they are at least recycled.

So let's put a vague number on it. 2 billion cards means around the equivalent of 200,000 trees. Interested yet?

You don't have to send ecards (I hate them too) - there are a MASSIVE range of alternative ecofriendly cards on the market.

Visit the Green Christmas Cards hub for ideas on cards and also how to use them or recyle them after Christmas.

Most of us like a good party - especially at Christmas. In fact it's really known as the party season with very good reason. We go to more parties in December than any other time of year.

But a Green Party doesn't mean discussing politics (and if it does to some people, you can always lock those guests in the broom cupboard with a bottle so they don't spoil the fun!).

For ideas for how to make sure your festivities are as envorinmentally-friendly as possible, just visit the Green party hub for a guide to greening your Christmas party!

In the developed “Western” nations, the amount of waste that will be produced this Christmas is beyond belief.

And as much as 10% of the waste that is produced through the entire year winds up on Boxing Day pavements. Besides the few hundred million cut Christmas trees that are still sent to local landfills in Western countries, the number of cans, bottles, paper and plastic goes up by as much a 30% during the Christmas holiday. And to this we add items that are somewhat more difficult to recycle than the typical bottle or can.

For recycling ideas, check out the Green Christmas recycling hub.

by Julie-Ann Amos, professional writer, and owner of international writing agency www.ExquisiteWriting.com

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