Last year I decided I wanted to improve on the sustainability and ethics of my Christmas. It was something I had been thinking about for a while, but then Christmas hits and things start to get really busy it always just falls to the wayside. During the previous Christmas I had mainly concentrated on making the gifts I got more ethical, but this time I want to expand on that.
Cards and gifts.
As with last year I want to make sure that I the gifts I get are more ethical then the usual presents. This can be difficult to achieve and it's easy to get lost in the rabbit hole trying to find something that ticks all the boxes, so I'm going to look for something that contains at least one of the following: fair trade, organic, locally produced, cruelty free, low toxicity during production, and as climate neutral as possible. Finding something that was all of those would be very difficult and probably well out of my budget, but even just finding a product which has just one of these would mean giving support to a better way of producing goods.
I've decided to make some of my Christmas cards this year, something I am sort of regretting as I haven't really given myself enough time to do as many as I would like. This means I still needed to buy some of my cards. Every year I make sure that the cards I get do actually support a charity of some kind and this year I've decided on the British Red Cross because of the help they provide to people after natural disasters and in war torn areas. With the scale of fighting this year and the number of natural disasters (possibly connected to climate change) it seemed like a good place to send some money over Christmas.
As for wrapping the gifts. Last year I tried wrapping presents using the furoshiki method and I might give this a go this year as well. However, I've also noticed a number of companies that are now making wrapping paper out of 100% recycled paper and printed with environmentally friendly vegetable based ink and thought it would be interesting to give this a try as well. Then I can decide what I'm going to use moving on to next year.
Decorations.
I'm not really a decoration person and I'm not even sure if I have any Christmas decorations (possibly one or two in a box at my parents house). I thought it might be interesting to maybe get a couple of things for the house (obviously not as elaborate as the street decorations) but I am very specific about what I want to get. To me Christmas will always be connected to Norway as that is where we lived when I was a child and most excited about Christmas. Due to that I want to decorations I get so have that Scandinavian feel about it, being made of wood, and containing the distinctive reds and greens that always make me think of this time of year. I also only want a couple of items that I put out every year, but don't take up too much space to store then rest of the year. I haven't found anything just yet, but will keep my eyes open to see what pops up, especially as we're going to Norway at the end of January.
Food.
Last year I was at my parents for Christmas, but this year it looks like I'll be at home instead. This means that I'll be making all the decisions about what I eat when the big day comes around. As with getting gifts, finding food can be difficult when you're trying to find something that ticks all the ethical / sustainable boxes. On the plus side, the fact that I won't be eating any animal products definitely takes out a couple decisions when trying to find ethical food. I will try and make as much of it from scratch myself, reducing the amount of process food as much as possible, and I'm going to try a buy local or organic or both if I can find it.
Asking for gift.
When people ask me what I would like for Christmas I usually don't really know what to say. Most of the time I don't really want something specific and if I do I'm more then capable of buying it myself and almost prefer to do so. What usually then happens, as people still like to buy you gifts, I end up with presents that are thoughtful but not what I want or need. So this year I've decided to be a little more helpful and ask for gift cards that allow me to buy some of the digital items I want (like some movies I still want to see) and experiences (of the outdoor active variety, not the spa variety - that's not really my thing). This way they will still be giving me something, but it'll be something I can actually use and not something I'll have to feel guilty about getting rid of.
Donating and decluttering.
Christmas is always now known as a time of plenty and excess, and, whether you want it to or not, that feeling does have a tendency to seep into everyone's attitude - I know it does with me. I want to try and reset that this year by reminding myself that I'm perfectly happy living with less and the way I've decided to do that is to do another declutter of my items and keep adding to my donate pile. As I've already done a whole lot of decluttering this year I can't see there being a lot of things that will actually need to go, but just reminding myself of that feeling and that attitude will hopefully stop me from being caught up in the madness and buying a whole lot of stuff I don't need. It'll also be good to remind myself that Christmas is meant to be about a time of giving and not a time of buying, buying, buying.
So that's been my Christmas plan, what's yours? Are there any aims or goals that you're going for this year? And do you have any advice on how to make Christmas a more sustainable holiday? Let me know in the comments below.
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