Christmas time in my experience brings family together, lots of eating and gift giving, which I love, but it can also be a very wasteful time. I have always loved the gift exchange aspect of Christmas but I've come to realise that we need to be more mindful of how we approach it. Now Christmas for me starts very early as I enjoy more crafting & repurposing and less online shopping. Here are some things I have explored in trying to have a more sustainable Christmas and what has worked for me. I really enjoy different types of arts and crafts so that is going to be a recurring theme in this post.
1. Advent Calendars
Advent calendars can be one of the most commercial things about Christmas, which usually comes full of excess packaging, but it doesn't have to be that way. For the last couple of years, I have explored crafting my own calendars for family and friends. This made me really think about what would be meaningful (rather than poor quality chocolate) and gave me lots of enjoyable crafting hours. I tried to make these using repurposed materials as much as possible. Here are three examples from last year.
Activity calendar
I made a calendar full of mindful activities tailored to the person I was making the calendar for. The first day contained a small booklet and each day had a sticker with instructions on what to do on that page of the booklet, with a few chocolates here and there. This calendar was very personalised and it was really appreciated by the receiver. I had fun making it and it was a very interesting process.
To write the notes for each day I repurposed an old diary. Each day I wrapped the notes in paper from Who Gives a Crap toilet roll wrappers and twine. I stuck each little package to some recycled cardboard with paper tape. After the calendar was used, I saved up the cardboard and twine for future projects.
Pouch calendar
This was a very simple calendar made by wrapping chocolates (broken pieces from a favourite chocolate bar) in small pieces of fabric tied up with twine. Each pouch also contained a personalised message. All of this fabric was from curtain swatches that we ordered a long time ago. After the calendar was used, I saved up the swatches and twine for future projects.
Jewellery calendar
This calendar was made for a child and it was a very fun creative project. Initially, I made lots of small compartments by cutting up toilet roll tubes and then I stuck them down to some recycled cardboard in the shape of a Christmas tree. The compartments were filled with beads that combined to make a cute bracelet. The final day also contained a necklace to match. I had a lot of fun painting and decorating this after filling it up and it was appreciated by the recipient (see picture below).
2. Decorations
I love decorating the house at this time of year but unfortunately the Christmas decoration market is designed to make you buy new things every year which are not the best quality so would end up getting damaged or discarded. Here are a few tips on avoiding wasteful decorations habits:
- reuse any decorations you already have for as long as you can, even if they are made of plastic, it is better to reuse what materials have already been produced until they no longer serve a purpose;
- rotate your decorations if you have a lot and you tend to get bored of the same thing every year. When I was growing up, we had huge amounts of decorations, but we would never throw them out. Each year we would pick a colour scheme or theme and choose the decorations to fit it, all the rest could wait for another year;
- make your own decorations if you are somebody who enjoys crafting, there are many possibilities out there: crochet, quilling, sewing, decoupage, macramé to name a few;
- buy second hand if you are looking for new decorations and you're not up for making your own. Charity shops can be really good for this;
- buy good quality, handmade, sustainably crafted decorations from independent businesses which you will use again and again for a long time.
Below are some pictures of handmade decorations by me.
3. Gifts
Gifting is one of my favourite parts of Christmas but the constant advertising we are exposed to pushes us to keep buying new items that we don't need and discarding them so that we can buy even more. This behaviour is highly unsustainable both from a financial and an environmental perspective. Over the last few years, I have kept gifting for Christmas but I have thought carefully about what kinds of gifts I want to give and what their impact on the planet will be.
These are now my rules for Christmas presents. You will find a lot of them sound like my 'Avoid buying new' tips.
- If I want to buy something new I make sure it is made sustainably and it is good quality so that it will last a long time. But most of all, I make sure it is something the person actually needs and will use.
- If I can I try to find the item second hand in good condition. Charity shops can be a very good place for Christmas shopping. For example, books, crockery and clothes are very respectable second hand gifts.
- I also try to repurpose things I already have. For example, I made a shopping list out of an old diary that I hadn't used, some recycled card, and a scrap of fabric for a pencil holder. You can also sew things with scrap fabric or upcycled old clothes. I have made baby bibs and other gifts with repurposed fabrics.
- I will always try to craft as many of my gifts as I can. This goes hand in hand with the repurposing at times. I like to crochet so I often pick up new projects for Christmas gifts.
- If there isn't something that I think the person actually needs and will use for a long time I make sure I gift consumables. This can mean interesting types of food, baked goods, or even food kits. For example, I gifted ready measured soup ingredients in a jar for a person who lives on their own and might not always want to cook for themselves (this also works for cookie mix).
When wrapping presents, I always try to use repurposed materials, for example:
- old wrapping paper saved from presents received
- wrappers from Who Gives a Crap toilet paper (the limited editions are really fun)
- brown packaging paper saved from deliveries
- fabric scraps
- recycled twine which I use over and over again
- paper tape if I really need to.
How will you approach gift giving this festive season? Let me know in the comments.
4. Christmas table
In my family, it has always been an important part of Christmas to have a festive looking table. This probably means different things to different people but for me it means getting out all your best tableware and crockery. In the UK, we also have the tradition of Christmas crackers, which often leave behind quite a lot of unrecyclable waste. For the last couple of years, I've had a go at making my own from toilet roll tubes. All I had to buy was the snaps and the little gifts to go inside (which were consumables) and everything else was repurposed. I was pretty happy with how they came out as well.
5. Food
Everybody will have their own traditions when it comes to Christmas food, but we tried to make it as zero waste as possible by preparing things far in advance in order to not have to buy much in plastic packaging. For example, we made the fresh pasta a few weeks earlier and froze it in reusable containers. We also sourced different kinds of cheese in wax for our starter and tried to plan ahead as much as possible.
I hope you found my tips useful. I really enjoy getting creative at this time of year.
Let me know your ideas for a sustainable Christmas in the comments, and remember not to try to do too much in one go. One small change at a time is a great place to start.