The Green Spirit of Christmas: Unwrapping Joy and Care for Mother Earth!!

A very Merry Christmas to everyone!!! I hope that you all had an absolutely amazing day and year, filled with joy, happiness, care and Christmas magic!! Christmas is so many people's favourite time of the year, defined by iconic practices such as sharing things with each other, believing and being optimistic. It symbolizes what it truly means to be kind, giving, generous, and shows us togetherness, gratitude and hope. It brings joy to billions of children around the world, whether waking up to Santa's gifts under the tree, or spending precious time with family and friends sharing happiness and warmth in the cold.

Although, while we unwrap gifts and joy all around, for our planet, it is unwrapping a lot of waste and landfills. Household waste production increases by a whopping approximate 25-30% during the Christmas holiday time compared to the rest of the year. This huge surge in waste is mostly driven by packaging, food leftovers, and discarded decorations.

In the UK, approximately one billion Christmas cards are thrown away every year. That means, we would require approximately the space of 77 football fields to replant the amount we use each year.

The card material used at Christmas would stretch between London and Lapland, Finland over 100 times. Around eight million real Christmas trees are disposed of each year in the UK, resulting in approximately 12,000 tonnes of waste.

But Christmas is about hope. It is about optimism. It is about joy, happiness, care and a will to change for the better. And we can truly embody these ideas through small changes we can make to our traditional Christmas celebrations!!

Image by pngtree.com

Firstly, we can adopt meaningful and conscious gifting practices. We can opt for more thoughtful and eco-friendly gifts, such as experiences, or handmade items, such as an emphatic card or a nice homemade decoration to give friends and family. These gifts can be much more meaningful as you can make them more personalised, and specific to what the person you're gifting likes. It is also much more meaningful to the planet, reducing a lot of carbon emissions used in high-energy processes such as large scale manufacturing, packaging and shipping of normal gifting goods.

Wrapping has been percieved as an iconic element of Christmas gifting, making the gift seem more magical and building anticipation. However, the waste produced by excessive wrapping is unimaginable. It is so much so, that the United States alone produces 4 million tonnes of wrapping packaging waste, contributing heavily to global waste production and landfills. So, to be more empathetic towards our planet, we can utilize eco-friendly wrapping methods and materials. We can reuse cloth wraps, newspapers (which is brilliant recycling as they would most likely be going to waste after reading, and they are paper, meaning they are biodegradable, so not exacerbating landfills!!), or old gift bags, that we get from restaurants when packing or ordering food. These are often already decorated, and brilliant for gifting, as all you need to do is save these bags and hand the gifts in them, maybe with a small card too!!

Also, we must not use plastic ribbons, as they can be extremely harmful to marine life when dumped from landfills, trapping or entagling them leading to injuries, starvation or drowning. Laminated paper is also extremely harmful for the envrionment, as due to the plastic coating it does not biodegrade, turning into toxic microplastics that can be ingested by animals.

And lastly, we must keep energy and food efficiency in mind while celebrating Christmas!! We can use LED lights to light up and decorate the tree and our houses, as they consume very little energy and have a long lasting lifespan!! We can use timers or sensors to automatically turn the lights off when not needed, and unplug to ensure no phantom energy consumption.

We must also practice mindful eating, especially in large gatherings. We can plan portions carefully to avoid leftovers (wastage of natural resource), and even though many traditional Christmas season meals in many countries are meat-based, we can incorporate much more plant-based dishes in festive meals, to spread kindness and empathy towards animals as well as reduce carbon footprint involved in meat production!! We can also compost food scraps, and creatively re-use leftovers. One thing we can do is, we take all the food compost such as banana peels, etc, and along with fresh vegetables and fruits, feed the cows around our societies, so that instead of garbage or litter, they can enjoy a nice, healthy, and hearty meal!!

These are some small ways in which we can, along with enjoying a great and magical Christmas celebration, spread kindness for the environment and all living beings, and give back to Mother Earth by making responsible and eco-friendly choices. Because Christmas magic isn’t just found under the tree - it’s found in the small choices that let us celebrate with joy while caring for the world around us!! A very Merry Christmas to everyone, and a happy New Year :)!!!