The year-end festive season is filled with family gatherings and decorative planning. This also implies that you might be buying plenty of products to include in your activities. Many of these are single-use items that contribute to environmental waste.
Fortunately, there are innumerable ways to make your Christmas and Thanksgiving festivities eco-conscious. This is all about choosing the right products and materials for decoration to help keep your community resources sustainable.
Here are five sustainable ways to decorate your home for the holidays:
1. Use LED Lighting
Lighting is one of the most ideal decorations you can incorporate sustainability into your holidays. This is because they’re a large component of decorative works. Think about Christmas for instance when different lights are hung on the tree, outside the garden, around the house, and inside glowing yard inflatables. These not only use up large amounts of energy but also run the risk of increasing your electrical bill.
Thus, the key to turning your house into a spectacular light show while reducing electricity is through energy-efficient lighting. Florescent lights are a great example of lighting that can save energy and last longer than regular incandescent bulbs. On the other hand, if you still want to include bright colored lighting, you can use solar LED lights that don’t even require plugging into an outlet as they’re powered by the sun and can be charged using a battery.
2. Repurpose Packaging
Gift wrapping packaging is made out of unsustainable materials such as plastic, colored paper, and glitter. All of the wrapping paper ends discarded once the gifts are opened. Thus, for an eco-friendly holiday season, you can skip buying rolls of wrapping paper and opt for alternative ways to wrap Christmas gifts with a reusable gift wrap.
Many of these wraps are made of fabrics such as organic cotton and can be tied over the gifts. For medium to large presents, you can opt for drawstring bags or pouches that are stretchy enough to fit odd shapes. If you prefer a homemade choice, you can use vintage scarves, kitchen towels, or even decorative jars.
Doing this leads to zero waste after unwrapping as the packaging can be machine washed and stored for the next holiday.
3. Choose Sustainable Tableware
You may not have noticed, but many tableware sets bought for formal dinners contain items that can’t be recycled or reused, leading to a large clump of waste. These are mainly set with paper napkins, plastic cutlery, synthetic material tablecloths, Styrofoam cups, and aluminum foil for food. However, you can avoid these substances ending in your waste by choosing reusable sustainable tableware.
This means all the utensils and fabrics are made from natural materials that can be stored for years. Modern and trendy ideas include bowls and plates made from bamboo and napkins made from linen. These can be machined or hand washed and stored for another elegant dinner.
To dress the table itself, you can opt for a handmade table runner or placemats made from hemp or palm fiber that support non-pollutant initiatives.
4. Paper-Free Holiday Cards
To reduce unrecyclable paper waste, you can choose to send digital holiday cards to friends, family, and coworkers. You can still make your cards sincere and heartfelt by customizing them using design apps. These can provide you with the right creative tools to make your cards meaningful and unique.
You can choose from pre-designed templates and make your own decorative changes or start with a blank canvas. Once you’ve completed your cards and added your season’s greetings, you can send them online through email or instant messaging apps. Doing this allows you to sustainably send well wishes while saving money from printed holiday costs.
5. DIY Your Decorative Arrangements
Christmas and Thanksgiving are one of the best times of the year to get creative and truly design beautiful ornaments and decorations to make your home unique. You can either build structures or trinkets by hand or repurpose existing products and produce something new. Look for raw or complete artifacts that don’t need painting, printing, or using a lot of water to prepare.
DIY décor is a popular hobby that families are embracing, so there’s no shortage of sustainable craft stores to find objects that are plastic-free and made from recycled material. These can range from creating a garland out of your own garden foliage to making biodegradable ribbons out of raffia paper and table ornaments out of carved wood. If you prefer using ready-made items, you can pour jewels, beads, and gemstones into glass bowls and add some outside flowers on top as table centerpieces.
Conclusion
You can decorate your home for the holidays sustainably by choosing products and materials that are reusable and recyclable. These can either be bought or repurposed from existing items in your home to create something new.
Furthermore, you should strive for decorations that minimize resource and energy waste by avoiding single-use items and high electricity consumption lighting.
In the end, you can enjoy your holidays knowing that your efforts can reduce decorations costs while helping to keep the environment safe and clean.
