Preparing for holidays and other celebrations often involves a lot of shopping for gifts, decorations, and festive foods. If you are concerned about climate change and sustainability, it’s a good idea to make environmentally responsible choices in what we buy.
Choosing LED holiday lights can save on electricity when compared to incandescent lights. The estimated cost of electricity to light a six-foot tree for 12 hours a day for 40 days would be $10 for Incandescent C-9 lights and 27 cents for LED C-9 lights. Plus, the same LED string could still be in use 40 holidays from now.
Avoiding single use paper items can help save trees. According to the Clean Air Council, “In the U.S., an additional 5 million tons of waste is generated during the holidays. Four million tons of this is wrapping paper and shopping bags.” Cloth gift bags are a nice alternative and are more likely to be reused and re-gifted. Sending e-greetings instead paper cards can help save trees as well.
Selecting the perfect gift is a common challenge. Sometimes the best things in life aren’t things. Giving someone an experience, like a trip to a National Park or tickets to a play, can have a much more personal impact. Offering a friend a membership to a museum they love or taking a child to a planetarium can create memories that last longer than a scarf or the latest action figure.