Time to take the green Christmas challenge says Hackney Friends of the Earth
Home-made pomanders. Photograph: Caroline Young
“Recycle at Christmas.” No doubt Hackney residents will be reminded of our recycling duty over the festive season.
But as many of us are facing a financially bleak mid-winter, we challenge you to join us in getting a bit more radical! You may well have mixed feelings about this traditional time of excess and welcome the change to do things a bit differently this year.
With only 25-odd shopping days to Christmas at the time of writing, the pressure is on to get cracking with buying those presents. Here are some more ideas for how you could make this Christmas lighter on your purse, your planet and maybe even your waistline.
How about agreeing with your family and friends that you will only buy each other presents from charity shops? Not everything they sell is secondhand of course.
You can buy people experiences rather than material goods, for example theatre vouchers. Or chose items that make a positive contribution, through being fairly-traded, organic, made of recycled materials or solar-powered. Friends of the Earth recommend ten eco-friendly gifts for Christmas.
For children, how about toys that don’t need batteries, rather than electronic gadgets?
Re-use wrapping paper from year to year, and if you have to buy new, buy recycled. Even better, learn the fun and easy art of wrapping your presents Japanese furoshiki style in scarves – more about this here.
The greenest way to give cards is with e-cards – but we’re not convinced they substitute for cards you can write letters in and put on the mantelpiece. So if you do, buy charity cards made of recycled card, checking what percentage of the price goes to charity, and deliver those you can yourself. To green up the traditional splurge on food, buy locally-sourced / free range / fairtrade / organic and minimally packaged as much as possible.
If you’re stuck with a lot of leftovers, discover tasty ways to use them up at Love Food Hate Waste, and of course kitchen waste (apart from meat and fish) can be composted.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that Christmas isn’t Christmas without the tree, yet an astonishing eight million ‘real’ Christmas trees are sold each year in the UK. If you’re dead-set on having a real tree, this year plant it out in the garden or in a tub after use and bring it back indoors next Christmas – in the summer you can grow sweet peas over it to give it some colour. Or after Christmas you can chop up the trunk and stack the pieces to make a refugee for wildlife, use the twigs to protect winter vegetable crops, or put it out for the council to collect.
Finally, when it comes to travelling, if you can, appreciate the exercise that getting around on foot and bike gives you at this time of over-indulgence.
As part of your festive get-togethers, enjoy a winter walk or cycle around Hackney’s great outdoor spaces, perhaps along the River Lea. They might even thank you when they don’t have to spend the New Year working it all off …