Albany, NY - November 25, 2016 - It’s time to buy, wrap, decorate, celebrate! Here’s some tips to green your holiday!
Reduce:
- Buy less - give gifts of your time, such as cooking, babysitting, or tickets to an event, which all require little to no packaging.
- Use LED holiday lights (which require 1/50th of the electricity of conventional lights) when decorating.
- Consider taking public transportation or carpooling with friends or relatives when traveling during the holidays.
- When shopping, combine your purchases into one bag rather than getting a new bag at each store.
Recycle:
- When sending or giving cards or stationary, look for paper with the highest percentage of post-consumer recycled content.
- Plan a "re-gift" swap with your like-minded friends and family to recycle your unwanted gifts.
Reuse:
- Try wrapping your gifts in old magazines, newspapers, posters, or children's artwork.
- Use last year's holiday cards to create this years "to" and "from" labels.
- Reuse gift bags instead of throwing them away.
- Save clothing boxes, ribbons, bows and wrapping paper to reuse next year.
- Make your holiday decorations from things found in nature such as a basket of evergreen branches, berries, twigs, bark, herbs, etc.
- Don’t forget to bring your reusable shopping bag if you do go shopping.
- Use re-usable cups, plates, silverware and utensils at your holiday party.