Happy Sustainable Christmas!

By Dan Hutton on November 18, 2010 in

Aussies love a party, especially in the summertime, and Christmas is no exception. It’s a fantastic annual excuse to gather with your favourite people, eat, drink and be proverbially merry. These days however, it’s also a time of extreme and excessive consumption. Over the holiday period, most Australian waistlines, credit card bills and carbon footprints experience a massive blow-out. So, is it possible to have the Chrissy holiday you love with all the trimmings, without leaving an indelible mark on our precious natural resources? It most certainly is and I’m about to tell you how.

Holiday Recycling
Excellently, many people choose and re-use recycled wrapping paper and real ribbons (instead of that cheap, tacky, plastic stuff), but holiday recycling can work on a much bigger scale too. Why not buy a potted Christmas tree that you can love and adorn year after year? Thousands of perfectly healthy, photosynthesising pines are cut down every year for temporary decorations: loved intensely but briefly, and then cast aside into gutters country-wide, battered and bruised – wretched versions of their former glorious selves. Save trees and some cash by investing in a permanent evergreen.

Green Celebrations
Chrissy day is often a stinker and many of us rely on a bit of air-conditioned comfort to get us through the daylight hours. Air-conditioners burn through energy, but turning the thermostat down just one degree will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and your electricity cost by about 10%! If your family is partial to a beachside barbecue over the holidays, make sure you take your rubbish with you. Don’t leave it on the beach or in the park as it will all end up in the ocean.

Sustainable Gifts
Apparently in Australia we spend about $50 billion on Christmas gifts every year, and at least $700 million of that ends up in the bin before New Year’s Eve. So, if you’re sick of giving people stuff they don’t need and never use, a couple of Sydney councils have gotten together this year to help you find great, useful gifts that don’t cost the earth. Check out www.thebestgift.com.au for some inspiration. Another gift idea for that person who has everything (or for that work colleague you don’t really know, but picked in the secret Santa draw) is to make a charitable donation on their behalf. Such donations can make a huge difference to developing communities by paying for important things like water wells, crop seeds, buckets and even livestock. You can get started at www.charitygifts.com.au.

So think creatively, revamp your family’s traditions and have a fabulous, safe and wonderfully sustainable holiday!

To hear more from Alex and get a weekly fix of scientific, environmental and health-related info, tune-in to ‘Boiling Point’ on 89.7 FM Eastside Radio, every Tuesday at 6.00pm. You can also stream online at www.eastsidefm.org, find her on Facebook or e-mail boilingpointscience@gmail.com.