Between Thanksgiving and New Years Day, Americans throw away an additional 25% of waste. That’s over 25 million tons of trash for the holiday season. Greeting cards, envelopes, gift wrap, cardboard boxes and all the trimmings that make our holidays festive really add up in the landfill.

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to be festive and green at the same time. Ecopreneurs preparing their holiday marketing promotions can learn a thing or two from creative business owners like Von Glitschka, an independent graphic designer and illustrator in Salem, Oregon. Instead of sending a printed holiday mailing, Von created a fun promotion and made it available as a PDF file online. That way his recipients could choose to print and assemble the “4th Not So Wiseman” at home, or just enjoy it online without printing a thing. Not only do online promotions like this save a bundle on printing and postage costs, but they eliminate envelopes and paper cards, and thus, waste.

Von’s Not So Wiseman also comes along with a green message and a cute story by Kristen Fischer. The Not So Wiseman is not so popular because he brought coal as a gift for baby Jesus, but “Jesus just wasn’t down” with coal’s production of greenhouse gases. Now the 4th Wiseman serves as a reminder to be green and kind to the earth, because if you don’t, you deserve nothing more than coal for Christmas! You can download and create your very own 4th Not So Wiseman at Von’s blog, Art Backwash. Don’t forget to print him out on recycled paper!

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Lush Cosmetics have always been ahead of the game when it comes to reducing packaging. Their line of solid shampoo bars, conditioners, body butters and soaps are freshly cut for each customer and don’t require packaging. However, they’re about to take that concept to a whole new level. In an effort to reinforce the message that we need to reduce waste through re-thinking packaging of consumer goods,  what better way to emphasize the point than to enlist your sales team to reduce their own packaging. This Wednesday, August 27th, Lush salespeople in 25 stores across America will be wearing nothing but aprons saying, “Ask me why I’m naked.” Customers are also being asked to take action and will be urged to ‘go naked’ by purchasing products with no packaging.

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Ever wonder why the average new parent runs out to buy a huge SUV for the new family? It’s not to carry the baby, babies are pretty small. It’s for all the STUFF. An endless variety of unnecessary stuff that is marketed to you as a parent. I’ve survived the baby year.

Here’s a few tips on gear you (and the land fill) won’t miss later:

1. The Nursury Sanitizer. Because that binky isn’t going to hit the floor every five seconds, anyway. Go ahead, spend $59.95 and drive yourself crazy trying to keep everything “clean.” That sucker’s going in the closet after about a week of reality.

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Question: What are some ways that hotels who produce large volumes of food sraps minimize wastes? Currently all food scraps are thrown into a large commercial compactor bin. Any ideas how this can be overcome and a more eco-efficient strategy adopted?

Answer: My local co-op recently implemented one solution for large amounts of food waste. It's called the Earth Tub, a commercial duty composter made for businesses like hotels and restaurants that produce large amounts of food scraps. It's a self-contained system that quickly composts food scraps, is easy to stir, and can be used year-round.

The Earth Tub is made by Green Mountain Technologies, specialists in composting technologies that describe their product as a perfect sustainable solution for businesses such as hotels:

The Earth Tub is a small scale, in-vessel composting system for recycling organic waste materials at the site where they are generated. Complete with a bio-filter for odor processing and control, this system provides a neighborhood friendly efficient composting technology. The Earth Tub has been developed specifically to meet the composting needs of universities/schools, restaurants/cafeterias, commercial food processors, hospitals, multi-unit residential dwellings, camps and other institutional organic waste generators.

The Earth Tub can process up to 500 pounds of waste a day, and it compacts as it composts. It is also a modular design so it's easy to expand. It is designed for food scraps, yard waste, and needs a bit of dry material like sawdust or shredded paper to control moisture levels. It sounds like a great solution for a large operation like a hotel, and then you could use the compost it creates in your landscaping.

In addition to a large composter, there are many practices that can be implemented to help reduce waste and become more eco-friendly in your operations. One idea is to adjust the portion sizes at restaurants so that less waste is produced. At most restaurants, the portion sizes are much too big for one person to finish in a meal (not that this keeps people from trying). Adjusting portion sizes can be a trial and error process until you notice that less food is thrown away.

Another option would be to change the types of meals you offer so there are more sustainable options. For instance, offering more vegan and vegetarian meals would not only make healthier food available to your customers, but plant-based foods are less wasteful to produce and thus more sustainable. This will also make more fodder for the Earth Tub, since the majority of food waste given to it should ideally be non-meat and non-dairy.

Other things you can do to become a more sustainable business are to source local and organic ingredients whenever possible. You could go as local as possible by growing some of your own ingredients! Herbs and spices are easy to grow in windowboxes, or on a larger scale, a rooftop garden could provide not only fresh ingredients, but insulation and increased energy efficiency. There are many things a hotel or other large business can do to become a more sustainable operation, from using natural laundry detergents and non-toxic cleaning materials to using an Earth Tub.

By adjusting your hotel operations and looking into composting options like the earth tub, I'm sure you can become a greener business. Don't forget to advertise all you're doing to be sustainable, it may just help attract new customers!