5 Easy Ways to Reduce Waste this Holiday Season

The holiday season is a great time to spend with loved ones, celebrate, and eat delicious food. However, it’s also a time when waste can pile up—think decorations, food waste, and wrapping paper. Americans produce more waste during the holiday season than at any other part of the year. This amounts to 1 million extra tons per week. Luckily, there are several ways that can turn your gatherings into a more eco-friendly affair. To help you and your family reduce waste this season, we’re providing some tips on how to decorate, plan and cook food, and think alternatively about gift-giving. Read through our tips and tricks for reducing your waste this holiday season.

1. Reducing Waste When Decorating

What is the holiday season without decorations? Many families opt to decorate for each holiday- with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s decorations (just to name a few) going up this holiday season, it can potentially create a massive amount of waste.

Use natural materials:

When decorating for the holidays, try using natural materials. These include logs, tree branches, leaves, pine cones, cinnamon sticks, and fruits such as dried berries and oranges. Using natural materials that can decompose will help keep the plastic decor out of the landfill.

Have a plan for your tree:

Some families opt for using a real Christmas tree instead of a fake one for the holiday. This might sound odd, but using a real tree may be better for the environment than a fake tree! Synthetic trees are often made with PVC plastics, a non-recyclable material that also creates pollution during manufacturing. Additionally, at the end of your fake tree’s life, it has to be buried in a landfill.
Depending on where you live, your city could have a tree drop-off center or have curbside pickup on specific dates. Make sure you remove all ornaments, lights, and the stand. In Burnaby, for example, trees over five feet must be cut in half, and trees are not allowed in the green bin.

Use LED lights:

Use LED lights instead of incandescent bulbs. LED lights do not get hot to the touch which means they’re a lot safer to use with your other decorations. LED lights also use less energy than incandescent bulbs and are a lot more durable, which means that you can use them year after year without needing to purchase new lights.
If you use lights, turn them off when not in use.
Put your lights on a timer so you can regulate how long they are turned on.
When decorating your tree, try substituting lights for popcorn and cranberry garlands.

DIY or second-hand décor:

For decorations around the house, instead of going to the mall to buy new decorations, shop around at your local thrift stores. Thrift stores can have a good collection of vintage holiday decor to give more uniqueness to the decor around your house. Shopping second-hand stores are also great for those who opt to DIY their holiday decor.

2. Environment-Friendly Gifting

What’s the holiday season without gifts? Unfortunately, with all the gifts we give to our loved ones, lots of waste comes along with them as well. The following tips should help you cut down on the waste generated by gift-giving.

Make a homemade gift:

Make something consumable, such as a mason jar filled with the dry ingredients of your favorite cookie or brownie recipe. It’s a sweet treat to share and cuts down on the clutter and waste that would accumulate. If sweets aren’t a favorite for your loved ones, custom-made bath bombs, salts or soaps are a great gift to give as well!

Reuse old wrapping paper:

To help reduce waste, save the wrapping or bags that gifts come in to reuse for future presents. Similarly, consider buying non-holiday-specific wrapping paper that can be used regardless of holiday or event, or better, use plain recyclable paper like butcher paper or newspaper.
Many have also used scarves or other beautiful fabrics to wrap gifts. It adds uniqueness to the gift as well as giving the intended person an item that they can wear or use.

Skip boxed gifts:

Most gift wrapping is not recyclable due to their mixed materials, meaning lots of rubbish after unwrapping. The boxes we put gifts in are also made from the same materials. Alternatively, you could also invest in your loved ones by giving them a monetary gift or donate in their honor to one of their favorite charitable organizations!

3. Reducing Food Waste During the Holidays

Food is unquestionably the centerpiece of the holidays. Food is the highlight of many of our holiday traditions and memories. We can all think of a holiday dish that makes us smile and our mouths water instantly. It can be easy for food preparation to get out of hand and create more mess and waste than anticipated.

Buy less food:

Before you buy all new recipe ingredients, take a good inventory of what is in your fridge and cupboards. Chances are that there are ingredients for part of a recipe or even enough ingredients for a whole dish already inside your house. Try to use ingredients you have on hand first before going out to get new ones. When you do go to the grocery store, have a shopping list on hand and stick to your list.

Cook and serve with a plan:

The easiest way to reduce waste of food during the holidays is to buy and prepare the right amount of food in the first place. Once the home chef knows roughly how much food is needed, create a detailed shopping list and stick to it. This will prevent getting sucked in by holiday display’s appealing sales throughout the store, sometimes causing excessive purchases that may not be needed and may not be eaten.

Shrink serving sizes:

Reduce portion waste by using smaller dishes and smaller serving spoons during the meal – seriously, it works! People can always come back for seconds.

Keep track of your leftovers:

After your holiday feasts, try to use your leftover dishes in other recipes. There are a lot of creative dishes you can make with leftover turkeys, such as turkey sandwiches, homemade stock, or even exotic dishes like jook soup. Ham, potatoes, nuts, and other holiday staples have several forms of reuse as well in leftovers!

Use reusable dishware:

Use washable dishware and cutlery, even pull out your holiday-specific dishware if you have them. Along with looking fun and festive, using washable plates will cut down on the waste that gets sent to the dump. Due to their light material and their contact with food, disposable items are not recyclable – and if they’re made with wax or plastics, they’re not compostable either. This ends up creating waste, no matter how convenient it is to not have to do Thanksgiving dishes.

4. Shopping sustainably

The holiday season brings with it many trips to the grocery store for party food or the mall for presents. Each trip you take is adding to carbon emissions, especially if you don’t have an electric vehicle. This season when you are taking these trips try to plan ahead.

As holidays require more shopping than usual, so when you are out, don’t forget to bring reusable shopping bags, even to the mall to skip the plastic bags.

When grocery shopping, buy an extra dessert that won’t go bad too quickly. This way if you are invited to a last-minute event you won’t have to race back to the store.

5. Reducing transportation

When attending holiday events, many people have to travel. If you are going to a party, see if someone in your vicinity wants to carpool. This will reduce emissions as well as clear up traffic on the roads and create space for parking. If a carpool isn’t available, try a different greener option like taking public transportation, walking, biking, or choosing the carpool option on a rideshare app.

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The Bottom Line

The holidays are a time when people gather in homes to celebrate their family and friends. This can easily be done while reducing waste if you are intentional about your celebration and take the time to make choices that are good for the planet. As the holidays come to a close, you’ll be looking towards the New Year. To keep up with your intention to reduce waste throughout the year, try making a green resolution.

Some green resolutions to try:

Bring your own grocery bags to the store
Eat organic whenever possible
Reduce your meat consumption or eat better quality meat
Meal prep more to avoid food and plastic waste
Avoid fast fashion and shop locally or second hand
Use natural cosmetics that don’t contain chemicals
Avoid microplastics in your face wash, dish wash, and detergents
Bring your own water bottle or reusable coffee mug places
Carpool, walk or bike more often

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