Everton Park
If you haven’t finished your Christmas shopping yet, then how about making this year’s Christmas wishlist a green one?
An unfortunate side effect of Christmas, with all of its gifts and parties, is that we tend to be a lot more wasteful than usual. All of the extra waste we throw away ends up taking up space in our landfills, which is bad news for the future of our environment.
But we can all help make Christmas a sustainable and “green” holiday by making some small changes to our gift giving and festive activities.
- When you go shopping this year try and remember to take your own bags with you. If you forget try and pool as much of your shopping into as few bags as you can.
- A lot of extra resources are used at this time of year simply to transporting gifts around the planet, especially with the increasing popularity of online shopping. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint though, then try and buy gifts from local stores (this has the added benefit of keeping money in our local economy).
- When you are choosing gifts try and find ones that are sustainable, such as plants, food and drinks. An experience gift is also a great idea.
- While it is probably too late this year, for next year consider holding a “Kris Kringle” in your family, that way you each only have to buy one gift.
- Instead of buying Christmas cards buy charity, recycled or e-cards.
- Wrap gifts using recycled paper or other recycled materials – get creative!
- If you have leftover wrapping paper, then keep it to use next year.
- Turn Christmas lights off overnight or when you aren’t home to save electricity.
- Consider giving unused presents away to charities organisations or a friend.
Good luck Christmas shopping this year and if you need some extra shopping time to get everything done, you can check out this year’s Christmas extended shopping hours at www.ourbrisbane.com/shopping/christmas-shopping-hours-city.