Have an environmentally friendly Christmas

Christmas comes with an unimagineable amount of packaging, wrapping, cardboard and plastic. Resist the urge to splurge and go green this Christmas, suggests Helen O’Callaghan.

Merry Christmas, but make it environmentally friendly — resist the urge to splurge. Consider the environmental cost of Christmas when making purchasing decisions.

This is the message from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which urges families to avoid the top festive splurges: excess gifting and poor gifting decisions, over-buying and over-preparing food, excess packaging and overheating homes/hot water. All of which adversely impact the environment.

“We’re not saying ‘bah humbug’. [We’re] simply advising consumers to think ‘pocket and planet’ when assessing Christmas requirements. As parents, we can’t start early enough transferring our values,” says Dr Jonathan Derham of the EPA.

Christmas provides myriad opportunities for modelling the value of environmental protection. Your child wants to get Granny a present? Why not a home-made craft gift? Bring children for a walk in the woods where they’ll gather acorns and pine cones; maybe to the beach to collect shells. Supply them with cotton wool, get a log from someone selling firewood and let them decorate the log.

“It’s a personal gift, it’s decorative, the kids will have had fun and Granny will get far more joy than from a pair of socks,” says Dr Derham, who also suggests an alternative to Christmas cards.

Out walking, encourage children to find a flat stone about the size of a parent’s hand. Use acrylic paints or a stone painting pen to create a picture on it — of themselves, Granny, a Christmas scene. “So Granny has a permanent gift she can look at and get a giggle out of. She might make a collection every year and see the evolution of her grandchild’s artistic skills.”

Explain to children every time you act to make it a happy Christmas for the environment: ‘Look, Dad got a gift from his brother but he has no use for it, so, rather than hoarding it, let’s re-gift it to charity — somebody out there will love it’.

After gift-opening on Christmas morning, work with children to separate all packaging waste and put it in the recycling bin. Great if they want to make a space ship out of a large box — reusing is good.

If you need to replace Christmas lights, buy LED lights and tell kids the reasons. “They’re safe – they don’t heat up, so little curious people don’t burn hands. Over a lifetime, they use about 10% of the energy other lights use,” explains Dr Derham, who points out that eco-friendly Christmas-related decisions increase personal sustainability as much as environmental.

Top tips

• On different days, make each of your children responsible for Lolo — last out puts lights out.
• Avoid gifting toys with batteries or choose ones with rechargeable batteries.
• Teach children to recycle batteries — explain they’re toxic to the environment.
• Pre-Christmas or over the holidays, bring broken gadgets to the recycling facility.
• Get kids involved in cooking leftovers from surplus Christmas food.

www.stopfoodwaste.ie; epa.ie/livegreen