Celebrate Earth: Greening our Holidays
Green holiday ideas: I thought whoever has ideas could add them to the comments of this post, for everyone else's inspiration. If we get enough ideas here, I'll add this post to the sidebar so it's available even after it scrolls down off the main blog page. I will start it off.
Green Holiday Idea #1: re-useable giftwrap.
If you start practicing now .... you'll be such an expert at using furoshiki to wrap gifts for Hannukkah/Christmas/Solstice/Kwanzaa. That way you're not creating more trash for the landfills. Even better -- make homemade furoshiki but cutting squares out of old clothing, fabric scraps or (if you're like me with my piles of fabric stuffed into the linen closet) use up some of the fabric that's been sitting around for ages. I can imagine teeny tiny furoshiki or large ones. (click the "using furoshiki" link (above) or the "How to fold a furoshiki" link below, to get to a diagram of folds.)
How to Fold a furoshiki
I wrote a post about furoshiki folding over at my personal blog. Here is a link to a Japanese website with a couple of folding diagrams.
And here is the link to my furoshiki post at Raven's Nest.
Anybody else have good ideas for greening up the holidays?
what's this about?
Celebrate
12 comments:
We are also trying to 'green' our Christmas activities wherever possible. One of our best ideas has been to add a little bit of green food coloring (organic) to our Baileys. We have searched for fair trade food coloring with no luck so far... anybody know a source?
No, but seriously, we are trying to reuse the wrapping, bows and boxes over again, if not for Christmas, then for something else. If we can't reuse it then we make sure it gets recycled. Otherwise we don't have very many ideas on how to be more green. Our eco-footprint is gigantic and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it.
Peter
Instead of using a live tree for Christmas you could buy a plastic one that you can reuse year after year. It's not as nice as a real tree and it sure doesn't smell as good, but it's good for the environment.
You can make all sorts of your own ornaments for the tree from things you have lying around the house. For example, a little white paint, some wooden beads, and some uncooked bowtie and penne pasta can be turned into angles. And then there's the endless joy of making popcorn strings...
LED Christmas lights use less energy than traditional lights. They also waste less energy because they don't give off any heat. You can put your outside lights on a timer to save energy in case you forget to unplug them.
It's not as pretty as all the kinds of wrapping paper you can buy (or the pretty fabric that Maureen suggested), but you can use old newspapers to wrap your presents and then just recyle it all when you're done with it.
Instead of buying gifts for everyone you can donate to charities in someone's name. For example, there are non-profit organizations that offer "adoptions/sponsorships" where you donate money to "adopt" an animal or a piece of habitat.
Brenda
Hey Brenda,
Great ideas. Much better than Dad's idea with the food colouring.
Even though each of our "footprints" on the environment is immense, it's still a good idea to mitigate our effects no matter how small a difference it actually makes.
Do you remember when we used to make lots of things to sell at the Tatla Christmas Craft Fair and to give for gifts. I really enjoyed that. This year I bought a candy cane reindeer from Niall at the Craft Fair. It's just like the ones we used to make.
I remember making angels, but not angles. Hmmm.
We should also "Want what we have", rather than choosing to "Have what we want"
Merry Christmas!
maureen, what is the top image of? are those furoshki's drying?
yep - you guessed it, MB -- those are furoshikis drying after being dyed, but before they are cut...
any green holiday ideas, Marybeth? How about Nicholas and Ollie - I bet they have some ideas to make Christmas more earth-friendly.
Hey, Peter - I like that idea of adding green coloring to your Baileys. I have just one question: doesn't that turn out a bit muddish-olivish-greenish when you mkix green coloring with brownish Baileys?
We've used our bows, boxes, bags and wrapping paper over for years. Mickey and Gabe tease me about how careful I am when unwrapping presents so I can save the paper. Sarah and I have one Christmas paper bag with an angel on it that we've been trading back and forth on Christmas for at least 11 years. It's getting pretty ratty by now.
And Peter - can't you just squeeze your big feet into smaller shoes? that might reduce the size of your footprints. '-D
More ideas ...
* instead of giving "stuff" for gifts, give services that don't need to be wrapped and don't add to the gift receivee's house clutter. Things like coupons for shoveling snow, weeding the garden, cooking a meal once in awhile, cleaning out the closets, painting a fence ...
*give living gifts like houseplants, flowering potted plants, a gift certificate to a nursery (we all know people who would LOVE that!) or a tree to be planted by you.
I wrote a post about furoshiki folding over at my personal blog. Here is a link to a Japanese website with a couple of folding diagrams.
And here is the link to my furoshiki post at Raven's Nest.
I wrote a post about furoshiki folding over at my personal blog. Here is a link to a Japanese website with a couple of folding diagrams.
And here is the link to my furoshiki post at Raven's Nest.
I wrote a post about furoshiki folding over at my personal blog. Here is a link to a Japanese website with a couple of folding diagrams.
And here is the link to my furoshiki post at Raven's Nest.
I wrote a post about furoshiki folding over at my personal blog. Here is a link to a Japanese website with a couple of folding diagrams.
And here is the link to my furoshiki post at Raven's Nest.
hmmm, looks like there was a slight malfunction with blogger the other day when i posted multiple times about furoshikis .... either in blogger or in my brain! lol
Trying to get revive this holiday post: here are some more ideas for green holidays. . . gifts. Hmmm, what kind of gifts are good for the environment? One gift I know would be much appreciated by almost anyone in our family (even if it's not on their wishlist)would be a hanging birdfeeder (choose the right one) and enough seed to last the winter. To top it off and make the gift even better -- hang up the birdfeeder yourself!
Bird feeding stuff is cute, natural and even helps the birds! For those with young children, birdfeeders just outside a bathroom, kitchen or bedroom windows can start kids on a lifelong passion for birdwatching.
Other backyard birding related stuff that helps birds and is fun to receive as a gift: bird houses (especially ones handmade by you) bird books, birdsong cds. Audubon makes a really cool little bird-song imitator you can carry in your pocket. It's inexpensive and lasts many years. I've had mine for over 25 years.
okay, how about all the rest of you with more green Christmas and other wingter-holiday ideas? are you all too busy shopping, baking, studying?
Happy Solstice today!
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