Green Options

The gifts are all gifted and your green Christmas party was a hit! Now, that poor Christmas tree is looking a little sad and you’re wondering about the best way to dispose of it.

[Trash Day. Creative Commons photo by Brooke]

You’re not alone. North Americans buy over 30 million Christmas trees each season. Luckily, Earth 911 can help you recycle that tree rather then sending it off to the landfill!

What are you going to change about Christmas 2009 to reduce your GHG emissions? Have you thought about the issues that effect your carbon footprint? Now that Christmas has passed and we get back to less festive times, its maybe time to look at things.

I was prompted to post on this by an evening drive I took with my family to Lawley Street (-25.780785°  28.242231°) in Waterkloof, a suburb of Pretoria, South Africa.

Lawley Street is some 1.8 km long and is the address for approximately 90 large suburban houses, many of them are diplomatic corps & embassy residences. This normally quiet suburban road was filled with cars crawling up and down its length, all their to see the houses glittering in Christmas lights installed  each year by the house owners.

Lawley Street Christmas Decorations

A simple calculation, admittedly involving many assumptions, gives good estimates of the carbon footprint of “The Lawley Lights”.

Que the voice of Boris Karloff…

It was quarter past dawn…
All the Whos, still a-bed,
All the Whos, still a-snooze
When he packed up his sled,
Packed it up with their presents! The ribbons! The wrappings!
The tags! And the tinsel! The trimmings! The trappings!

When the Grinch stole Christmas, he not only stole the presents, he stole all the things that accompany Christmas that end up as waste. He  stole the ribbons, the wrappings, the tags, the tinsel, the trimmings, the trappings plus the Christmas trees and the food for the feast.

And what was the Grinch going to do with all that stuff he really didn’t want?

Three thousand feet up! Up the side of Mt. Crumpit,
He rode with his load to the tiptop to dump it!

Pretty much the same thing most of us have done in the past with all our Christmas leftovers, right? We dumped them. Not off the side of Mt. Crumpit, but in the trash.

This year, when we’ve got things leftover from Christmas, let’s be responsible with their disposal.

So you’ve made yourself some kitschy Christmas record bowls, but now you have all these kitschy Christmas record album covers lying around–what to do, what to do? Sometimes I make kitschy boxes out of my album covers, but you know, my tree could really use more kitsch, as well…let’s make some ornaments!

You will need: kitschy Christmas cardboard record album covers, sturdy scissors, perhaps some nice scrapbook or wrapping paper and glue, a hole punch, and an ornament hanger

Is it possible to celebrate Christmas without buying a dead tree or, worse, substituting a tree altogether with a vaguely tree-like heap of plastic, metal, and tinsel? Yes! Let’s look at three ways to find your perfect Christmas “sustainabili-tree.”

The first option you should consider is bringing a live tree into your home. It doesn’t have to be a huge evergreen tree. It could be whatever trees are common to your area, or whichever species you might fancy planting around or near your house. (In fact, it doesn’t even have to be a tree. Some bushes and shrubs look very tree-like and acclimate wonderfully to indoor living.) You could even plant a fruiting tree, like a persimmon tree if it grows in your climate, which offers beautiful and sweet fruit during the Christmas season. It might take a year or two after planting to fruit, but you’ll have a cache of delicacies when it does.