Decking the Halls with Sparkling Sustainability

We are going to geek out here on sustainability. It will be so contagious you’ll keep these habits for year ‘round shopping, decorating, and gift giving.

Last weekend, my mom took the kiddo for a couple of nights. I pulled down the two totes of wrapping supplies. To my surprise there were reusable bags for each present I needed to wrap. BAM, done. Zero trash from last year, zero trash this year. Huge time saver. What do I do with the rest of the supplies in the totes? There's some baggage I'd like to drop.

Feeling guilty with my extra time, I made the To: and From: address cards fancy. There was no need to buy those either. My kiddo had hand-painted some crazy art, and all I had to was cut, fold and label.

Too easy right? Yeah, I have a couple more presents I will have to wrap. I’m going to dig deep into the t-shirt achieves and pull out that old tie-dyed t-shirt that hasn’t been worn in a decade. You know you have those stashed in the deep dark depths of the closet.

You betcha, whatever fabric I have laying around is now a canidate for wrapping "paper." What’s the worst that could happen if I wrap the gift in an old t-shirt? It comes back to me in the future.

A few days prior, it was shopping time. Shopping for gifts means shopping local. Gifts, to me, are those specialty items that we wouldn’t buy ourselves on a normal day to day.

The more you shop local, the less the items have traveled, and the less fuel that item has used before it even arrived at the store.

With all the travel restrictions in place, the skies have cleared up. Here is the connection piece: I want you to know your choices, at a local level, do make a difference. To the fancy item at the downtown boutique to wrapping the gifts.

After you’ve done some local shopping, you'll want to grab a bite to eat. You eat at your local restaurant.

If you’re reading this, you’re the type that has bought their own to-go mug. You’ve bought your own water-bottle. You know you’re saving 365 coffee cups a year. You know you’re saving countless plastic bottles. You know to add a vegetarian meal occasionally to your diet. You save some animals, and the fuel, water, and energy it takes to feed them. Did you remember to bring your own to-go container?

You don’t have to pack it around like your coffee mug or your water bottle, but we knew we were going to make a day out of shopping and eat out. You have another proud moment of smart. You put your meal in your own to-go container and it doesn’t get smashed in the car. It doesn’t explode when you pick it up to bring it back inside.

Flash-forward to wrapping day. You’ve wrapped the presents in 5 minutes. You’re having leftovers that don’t need to be re-plated. You have your Christmas lights on a timer. You aren’t traveling this year. What do we do with all this extra time? You tell yourself good job. You appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into making a difference. You recognize it is a group effort and you are a part of something good. Being part of this sustainable culture is a shift that is specific to this era. It feels a little awkward, as we are breaking away from how we were taught to wrap presents.

Here is the biggest change you can make this year during the holiday season. Embracing that you are making a difference. Carry it through the rest of the year. If mid-year birthday presents are also covered in kid-art or random fabrics, your efforts will gain recognition. You will make other people aware of their choices and they will want to be as “creative” as you are.