How to Have an Eco-Friendly Holiday With Your Family

The holiday season is coming up, which means it’s more time to hang out and bond with your friends and family. This is the time for you to connect with them outside of the hustle and bustle of life that keeps you apart from them.

Going on a holiday with your family is fun, but sometimes a lot of people tend to push their limits and indulge in excess during this season. Sometimes to the detriment of the environment.

If you are an environmentally conscious person and you don’t want to have unsustainable practices during the holiday season, then we are here to tell you that it’s possible. An eco-friendly holiday is a reasonable goal and an admirable one at that.

If you’re looking for ways to make your holiday eco-friendly then here are some ideas:

Reuse Your Christmas Tree

It is a tradition for a lot of people to buy and decorate a new Christmas tree. However, after Christmas is over, there is the burden of getting rid of a dying tree inside your home.

Instead of doing that, why don’t you donate or give you a Christmas tree to a recycling center?

Instead of letting your old Christmas trees go to the landfill, you should instead contact or look for city programs that help turn your tree into something useful.

Purchase Eco-Friendly Gifts

The holiday season is also the season of gift-giving, and even when you’re giving gifts, you can still be eco-friendly.

There a lot of eco-friendly gifts that you can give that will be aligned with your morals while at the same time something your friends and family will appreciate.

For example, if you want to give clothes as gifts, then you have to make sure that the clothes are manufactured in a sustainable manner and are made through ethical labor forces. This simple step may be unnoticed, but at least you can give away gifts without a heavy conscience.

Look for products like these aromatic smudge sticks, which are fair trade and ethically and sustainably sourced products that support local artisans.

Care About Your Candles

If you are a lover of candles or scented candles inside your home, then you are likely using a lot of them to bring in and create an atmosphere that is homey and warm for the holiday season. Although this might seem like an innocent choice, you have to make sure that you are using the right type of candles if you are an environmentally conscious person.

Candles made out of paraffin wax are not sustainable because they are a petroleum product. Instead of using these types of candles, you should look for our candles that are made out of soy or natural beeswax.

Use Energy-Saving LED Holiday Lights

Being eco-friendly doesn’t only mean that you’re going out of your comfort zone and sacrificing a lot of things and comforts. Sometimes being eco-friendly will help you save money.

For example, if you use holiday lights that are not energy-efficient, then it will cost you a lot of money to operate them.

Make sure that the holiday lights you use are LED lights because they are more energy-efficient. This means that you will have a more manageable energy bill during the holiday season.

Buy Local, Organic Food

When buying any meat or produce, you should make sure that you buy things from a sustainable source so that you can support the farmers and local food producers. You should look into the local farmers in your area so that you can create a relationship with them.

By buying local and organic food, you are not supporting an exploitative industry that does not use sustainable practices to grow and create the food and produce that they supply.

Use Reusable Coffee Cups and Water Bottles

If you’re holding a party, make sure that you don’t provide coffee cups that aren’t reusable or water bottles that aren’t recyclable.

If you should have the need for coffee cups and water bottles, you should make sure that you provide reusable ones instead. After all, the one-time party item will end up in the trash bins and will end up dirtying your environment in the end.

Donate to an Environmental Group

Since it’s the season of giving, you might as well spread your love to a worthy cause.

If you have the means, why not donate to an environmental group? Preferably you should have local environmental groups to donate to. These groups accept monetary and in-kind donations like used items of clothing. There are also groups that accept eco-bricks, which they then use to build sustainable houses in developing and under-developed countries.

Offset Your Holiday Travel

If you’re planning on going on a trip for the holidays with your family, then try and avoid having to air travel as much as possible.

Air travel causes a significant amount of fossil fuel pollution for just one trip. This is why you should consider your holiday destination and mode of transport before going on a trip.

If you really have to use a plane, then you can do carbon offsetting to lessen the negative impact of your overseas flight to the environment.

Have Bins Ready for Food Waste

According to Planet Maids Cleaning Services NYC, having bins ready for food waste will make it easier for you to make the most out of the leftovers you have.

You can compost them and use it for your garden or donate them depending on your choice. Whatever you do, though, having bins will make it easier for you to reduce food waste and be more sustainable even during the holidays.

Conclusion

A lot of people think that if you want to have an eco-friendly holiday, you have to go out of your way to do so.

In fact, it’s quite easy to adopt an eco-friendly lifestyle even while you’re on holiday with your friends and family. As listed above, you can see that there are numerous ways to enjoy yourself during the holidays without compromising your beliefs. These are very simple solutions that will help you maintain a sustainable lifestyle, and you might even encourage other relatives to do so.

From the food that you eat to the decorations that you use during the holidays, these small changes that you do to make a sustainable and eco-friendly holiday with your family are something that the environment will appreciate.