ecobites.com

Making your life greener - one bite at a time.

Why not make a difference this festive season.

By practising the five R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rethink and Refuse, you can help celebrate our environment and do your part in reducing green house gas and consumer waste! 

We wish you an Eco Christmas...

Enjoy Green Christmas tips and web resources that will help you save money, reduce your Christmas carbon footprint, so you can have a eco-friendly and sustainable Christmas, with ways to celebrate sustainably over a period most definitely known for OVER consumption! A re-think about the priorities for the season and a move away from over-consumption, unnecessary spending and the ’stress of excess’.

 
REDUCE the amount of waste you produce:
 
* A UK survey showed that 3 million tonnes of waste was dumped during Christmas - enough to fill 120 million wheelie bins!
 
* Around 1 million Christmas cards were thrown away each year.
 
* 8,000 tonnes of paper or 40,000 trees were used to make wrapping paper – for Christmas presents alone.
 
* It's estimated that 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper end up in the rubbish bins each year, that's enough to wrap up Guernsey in the UK or the whole of King Island in Bass Strait, Australia!
 
*Six million Christmas trees took pride of place in British homes and offices, of these only 10% were recycled and fewer than 5% planted to be re-used for next Christmas.
 
* Don't forget to turn off your fairy lights.  Christmas tree lights left on for 10 hours a day over the 12 days of Christmas produce enough carbon dioxide to inflate 12 balloons. LED Christmas lights use 80% less energy than their incandescent ancestors, and they last 50,000 hours.  So make it a green Christmas in more ways than just the colour of the tree.
 
While you can save a lot by reusing and reducing at Christmas you can’t avoid creating waste completely. You can minimize the impact of your holiday consumption by changing the way you use power throughout the season. Avoid traditional electric holiday decorations and go solar or find products that use less energy, that are environmentally friendly and you will save money too.

The Wilderness Society www.wilderness.org.au

Choosing an eco-friendly Christmas gift is not difficult or expensive. It’s certainly worth the time to be environmentally friendly! When purchasing gifts look for items that have the following eco benefits: minimal environmental impact; minimal packaging; recyclable; made from recycled materials; little energy/water usage for its production or use; made in your own country, durable and can be repaired!
 
Share with your family memories of Christmas past. What meant the most to you? Was it the presents or something else? Are purchased gifts of things necessary? Consider purchasing items to save the environment: buy a worm farm to dispose of your Christmas food scraps; give a household compost bin for Christmas; take a Christmas walk, not a Christmas drive (especially after that heavy lunch). On picnics, take food in re-useable containers and take other recyclable material home with you.


Read American Mania: When More is Not Enough by psychiatrist Dr. Peter C Whybrow  http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/24545

Sites listed below have many hints for alternatives:

Ethical consumption for the holidays: you don't have to buy stuff to be loved. It's better for the environment if you don't. We in Western countries are 20% of the world population, but we are consuming over 80% of the earth’s natural resources, causing a disproportionate level of environmental damage and unfair distribution of wealth.  http://www.tikkun.org

Ownership can be a burden. Once you buy something, you have to carry it around, fix it, remember where you put it, and keep it clean. Experiment with the freedom of buying nothing and embrace Henry David Thoreau's sentiment that "he who owns little is little owned." 

http://www.ehow.com/how_111392_buy-nothing.html

http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/

http://www.xmasresistance.org/

http://www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/ 
 
CARDS & WRAPPING PAPER
 
There's no point recycling rubbish if we don't buy recycled products. Make sure that we use recycled cards, tags and wrapping paper or make your own, send texts or e-cards, after the big day, make sure your Christmas cards don't go to waste - take them to a recycling point.Wrap presents with ribbon or string instead of sticky tape.
Wrap a gift in a gift. For example, put kitchen utensils inside an attractive tea towel, or, give a child a backpack with more treasures inside.
Instead of using Christmas paper to wrap presents, find a decorative box or decorate one yourself- they're reusable and a present in themselves.
Put the kids presents in a stocking or a Santa Sack - it will save you hours of wrapping. For large, hard-to-wrap gifts, just add a large fancy bow.
 
E-mail your friends a festive message with a Christmas picture instead of sending a card, it saves time, money and paper. These websites might help you:
 
http://www.care2.com/send/categories

http://www.bluemountain.com/index.pd

http://www.messagemates.com

For details of greeting card recycling locations in your area, call the National Recycling Hotline on 1300 733 712 (Australia) or go to www.RecyclingNearYou.com.au and simply type in your postcode.

Cards 4 Planet Ark' runs until the end of January.

Australians spend around $30 billion on Christmas gifts each year.

This year you can be generous without costing the earth.

Vouchers for services like massages and gardening have a low eco-impact as do gifts like movie, concert or sports tickets. Also consider giving someone GreenPower or offsetting their carbon emissions.