It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and we have lots of eco-friendly tips to help with your Christmas preparations so you can have a merry and sustainable Christmas.
Christmas is a great time of the year for celebrating with friends and family, and all this festive cheer is traditionally associated with lots of good food and drink, decorations and gift-giving.
Unfortunately, these festivities can result in extra waste and energy consumption and can have a significant burden on the environment. To help you celebrate in a sustainable way, we have created some eco-friendly tips and swaps to have the most sustainable Christmas.
Christmas is a great time of year to put the waste hierarchy into action. The content in the sections below aligns with the waste hierarchy categories:
- Avoid – prevent waste in the first instance
- Reduce – to produce less waste
- Reuse – use the same item more than once
- Recycle – converting waste materials into new materials and objects
- Dispose – in the most environmentally responsible manner.
Sustainable Gift Guide
Christmas shopping doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg, and there are plenty of ways to save money and the environment when it comes to gift-giving.
Here are some tips to avoid purchasing items at Christmas time:
- Do an audit of what you already have – around the home, in your wardrobe, and the pantry
- Don’t impulse buy
- Ask yourself, do you want or need this product?
- Can you clean or fix a broken product and bring it back to ‘new’?
- Focus on quality rather than quantity. Better quality products will generally last longer.
- Organise a Secret Santa with your friends and/or family to reduce the amount of gifts.
Sustainable gift ideas to spread the Christmas cheer:
- A class, course or workshop they can do by themselves or with you. The endless possibilities include a cooking or coffee course, a painting or pottery workshop, a guitar or golf lesson.
- Gift an experience rather than a material gift. From a massage or spa day to a concert or a skydive – gift them memories they will never forget.
- Use your culinary skills to make homemade food or drink gifts. Give the gift of homemade cookies, slices, relishes or pickles. Food is the way to everyone’s heart.
- Consider offering a membership to a conservation organization, allowing them to enjoy magazines, discounts, and member benefits for their preferred attractions or subscriptions.
- Consider gifting a bird bath or a frog hotel to attract local native wildlife to their garden.
- Bokashi composting systems gift nourishing compost all year round.
- Gift a native tree or plant. A gift that keeps on giving when it matures and attracts birds, wildlife and pollinators to the garden. Check out our Growing locals plant guide for some ideas.
Read more about the Australian Made Campaign which encourages businesses based within the region to consider their Australian-made goods and services. You may also find some sustainable gifts this Christmas.
Gift Wrapping
Most Christmas gift wrapping paper gets thrown into landfill because it isn’t recyclable. Wrapping paper options, bows and ribbons are laminated, dyed or contain glitter or other materials, which means they can’t be recycled appropriately.
The good news is there are lots of ways to wrap your gifts sustainably that are beautiful and budget-friendly, here are some waste-free ideas:
- Use reusable Christmas stockings or sacks under the tree
- Consider wrapping your gifts in newspaper brown craft paper or place them in a box
- Reuse wrapping paper or gift bags you have received from others
- Consider soy wax or bees wax wraps
- Learn the art of furoshiki (fabric wrapping)
- Use compostable and recyclable wrapping paper.
Christmas outfits
Rather than buying a new outfit, you could shop for clothing at second-hand stores or hire an outfit. You could also consider attending or hosting a festive Christmas clothes swap, where your friends, family or community members could exchange clothes so you all have a new outfit to wear at Christmas.
Christmas Feast
According to the National Food Waste Strategy, Australian households throw away 3.1 million tonnes of edible food each year.
Try some of these tips to avoid sending leftover food into landfill:
- Meal planning – think about what you are cooking and who you are cooking for. Turkey has a lower carbon footprint than beef, and vegetarian options are even more sustainable.
- Make your list and check it twice – after checking what you have in the pantry, write your list and stick to it while shopping.
- Buy local food, and maybe even try to grow your own this year – check out Grow it Local or visit your closest Community Garden.
- Let people serve their own plates – food left on plates can’t be used as leftovers.
- Cook with your scraps – saving up onion skins, carrot tops, potato peels and other food scraps while cooking can all be used to create an amazing broth, perfect for making gravy and sauces.
- Repurpose your leftovers – try creative new recipes with leftover food
- Compost bins, worm farms and bokashi bins are great ways to discard any food waste you can’t repurpose. Use this beginner’s guide to composting, bokashi and worm farms to get you started. How To Compost Like A Champion | WasteSorted.
- Have a ‘use it up’ shelf in your fridge – Use It Up Tape | OzHarvest | Easy way to waste less food at home
Sustainable Alternatives
A sustainable Christmas doesn’t mean missing out on all the fun traditions you enjoy, it’s about finding alternatives that are better for the environment so that we can continue spreading the Christmas cheer.
Here are some suggestions for sustainable alternatives to some Christmas traditions:
| Christmas Purchase | Sustainable Option |
| Advent Calendars | Reusable, homemade, or plastic-free options. |
| Plastic Christmas tree | A real Christmas tree or alternate locally native option, like the Wooly Bush.
Wooden Christmas tree. |
| Disposable plates and cutlery | Don’t buy something to throw away the next day or to use once a year. You could borrow plates from family and friends for Christmas Day. |
| Tinsel, baubles and decorations | Make a wreath from native plants that are compostable.
Make paper chains from recycled paper. Incorporate natural elements. Make use of our local Borrow and Share Bunting Library. Buy second-hand. |
| Christmas cards | DIY your own card, send a homemade e-card on Canva, or recycle your cards and gift tags. |
| Plastic wrapping paper | Cloth wrapping. Watch a video on the Furoshiki (Japanese fabric wrapping) and use fabric from old garments or op shops. |
| Store bought Christmas crackers (they contain lots of plastic toys and knick knacks that get thrown away!) | Use toilet rolls to make your own crackers, and write your own terrible (or terrific!) Christmas jokes.
Ideas to include in the cracker:
|
Waste Disposal
Remember, waste should be viewed as a last resort. However, if you do need to use your bins, here is a reminder of where some Christmas items should be placed:
- Plastic Christmas trees – general waste bin
- Real Christmas tree – garden organics green waste bin
- Leftover food – if compostable, compost bin, bokashi bin, worm farm, and then general waste
- Wrapping paper that is plain or with prints – recycling bin
- Wrapping paper that has been laminated, dyed, contains glitter, metal or plastic – general waste bin
- Boxes from gifts – flattened cardboard boxes go in the recycling bin
- Batteries – take them to a special drop-off point. There are many located around the City of Joondalup in shops such as Coles, Woolworths, and in City buildings (libraries and Administration Building)
- Beer bottles and cans – save up and return to your nearest Containers for Change drop-off point or recycling bin (no lids in the recycling bin)
- Wine bottles – recycling bin (no lids in the recycling bin)
- Cards – recycling bin
- Tinsel – general waste
- Turkey frame and seafood remnants – general waste
- Textiles – if they cannot be sold, donated, used as rags, etc., general waste bin.
Make sure anything going into the recycling bin is clean and loose. Don’t forget that no bin can weigh more than 70kg.
Christmas Carbon Footprint
Having high spirits doesn’t have to mean having a high carbon footprint or high bills come January.
Here are some ways you can lower your Christmas carbon footprint:
- Transport – think about using sustainable transport options over the holidays. Use sustainable transport options such as walking, riding your bike, catching public transport or car-pooling when attending Christmas gatherings.
- Energy consumption – Reduce your energy consumption by turning off Christmas lights when they aren’t needed, and if you want to purchase new lights, consider LED bulbs or solar-powered lights. Find out more ways to reduce energy use.
- Water – Everyone can do their bit to reduce water use in the home and garden this Christmas. You can also nourish your garden by turning your food and compostable waste into food and nutrients from worm farming, composting and using bokashi bins. Find out more ways to save water.
Have a merry sustainable Christmas!
Tips and Resources
The GREAT Sort program (Be a GREAT Sort | WasteSorted) offers various ideas on how to be sustainable regarding waste.