(Source: Herald; Rock Hill, S.C.)
By Sharon Naylor
If you're dedicated to living a more eco-friendly lifestyle and
have incorporated some green practices into your household
successfully, you certainly will be interested in adjusting some of
your holiday traditions and practices to reduce waste. Think about
the mountains of wrapping paper left on your floor after the present-
unwrapping session. In the past, all of that paper was thrown in the
trash, along with the foam peanuts that encased the hot new toy your
child received.
Christmas is a holiday, but it doesn't have to be a holiday taken
from green living. Here are some top ways to reduce, reuse and
recycle your way through the holiday season:
1. Ban nonrecycled paper products. That means wrapping paper and
greeting cards. Shop from reliable suppliers. Hallmark, for
instance, offers greeting cards -- including its cards for 99 cents,
humor cards from its Shoebox and Saturdays lines, and part of its
PRODUCT (RED) initiative -- that are produced on paper with recycled
fiber. Hallmark's earth-friendly card line, unveiled in summer 2009,
uses 100 percent post-consumer waste recycled paper. No new trees
were used to make these cards, and they are made from recycled
materials that have been diverted from landfills or made from
materials originating in a sustainable forest. These green cards
sport eco-friendly labels on their backs for easy identification.
2. Give gift bags new life. If you've saved those cute gift bags
from years past, just snip off the filled-out tags attached to the
string handles, and use those repurposed bags to hold your current
year's gifts.
3. Use your supply of tissue paper -- likely in large supply in
your gift-wrapping stash -- as the wrapping for your gifts.
4. Recycle your bows. Eliza Cross, a Denver-based author and
environmental practices reporter who writes the Urban Homesteader
blog (http://urbanhomesteader. wordpress.com), says: "We don't peel
the backing off of 'peel and stick' bows. Instead, we use a little
tape to secure them to the package. They are easier to remove and
reuse that way."
5. Recycle packing material. Cross says she uses the paper
materials from her home office shredder as padding in her holiday
shipments.
6. Repurpose old fabrics. Ann Monroe, a blogger covering issues
of sustainability at www.annmonroe.com/blog, says, "Instead of
throwing out old, worn clothes, cut them up and use them to wrap
presents." Other fabric items ideal for wrapping gifts include worn
blankets and craft sheets of felt. Just gather the fabric around a
small gift; gather at the top; and tie the pouch with holiday
ribbon.
7. Use a gift registry so that loved ones know what you'd like to
receive.
