Let’s be honest, 2020 has been a tough year for both people and our planet. With small changes and a little creativity, Bokashi Bran can help you make all the difference by choosing to make this year an eco-friendly Christmas, simultaneously reducing your festive season spend and your environmental footprint at the same time.
6 Ways to Reduce Waste This Christmas
The less waste you send to landfill, the bigger impact you can have on helping to reduce global warming. Check out these six top tips to assist you in shopping smarter and opting in on eco-friendly Christmas decorations, gifts and gift-wrapping solutions. For more tips on how to be more eco-friendly, visit our blog.
1. Buy Less By Making Lists
Planning is key when it comes to reducing your spend and wastage during the festive season. Making shopping lists and sticking to them will help you to stop buying more than is necessary, whether it be festive food for your Christmas celebrations or gifts for family and friends.
Read Next: How to Reduce Your Food Waste
2. Use Recyclable Gift Wrap
Many of us tend to re-use last year’s wrapping paper as well as buying a few new rolls but what we don’t realise is that much of the wrapping paper contains non-recyclable elements like foil, glitter or plastic coatings.
If you want to know if your wrapping paper is eco-friendly, do the scrunch test. Simply scrunch up a piece of the paper with your hand and let it go. If the paper stays scrunched, it is generally a type that can be recycled or composted but if it unravels of its own accord, then that’s a sure sign that it is non-recyclable.
As well as opting to purchase printed recyclable wrapping paper, you can also get creative by using brown paper bags, tissue paper or even fabric scraps to wrap your gifts in. Use eco-friendly wool, string or paper raffia ribbon instead of traditional non-recyclable ribbon to tie up your parcels and for decoration. Add a few pinecones or dried flowers and leaves for extra pizazz.
And if you simply cannot do without glitter for that little bit of Christmas sparkle, instead of traditional glitter which is made from plastic, sprinkle on some edible glitter which is biodegradable.
3. Eco-Friendly Christmas Cards
Whether you send out Christmas cards or use gift tags on your presents, this year choose to buy or make your own cards using recycled or recyclable paper. A quick Google search will lead you to local on-line suppliers or crafters who offer a variety of growing paper gift tags or cards which contain seeds in the recycled paper and are themselves, a gift that can keep on giving.
Don’t forget to responsibly recycle any cards and wrapping paper for use next year, or compost them after the festive season is over.
4. Eco-Friendly Christmas Decorations And Gifts
Instead of using single-use crackers to liven up your Christmas lunch table, make or buy reusable ones and add your own personalised surprises. Think toilet roll inners and recyclable paper or alternatively source crackers made from fabric and cardboard tube inners that zip up or tie closed and can be re-used year after year.
Invest in re-usable advent calendars for the kids which you can fill every year with handmade or bought chocolates, truffles and small gifts.
Switch to LED Christmas tree lights. These use 80% less energy than traditional incandescent twinkling lights. Also, make the change to solar powered outdoor lights to further reduce your electric bill.
As well as re-using Christmas tree decorations from years gone past, if you’re wanting to add a few new decorations, consider eco-friendly ones like home-baked biscuits threaded on raffia or wool hangers. You could also make yourself a delicious fruit salad for breakfast and rather than throwing away the citrus fruit skins, cut festive shapes out of them using cookie cutters and hang those on your tree along with a few cinnamon sticks, which will not only add something different to your tree but will give off a lovely smell too.
Support local Christmas craft markets to source unique gifts for friends and family that are edible, made from recycled materials or which are eco-friendly from the packaging to their content.
5. Reduce Your Food Waste
While most of us are pretty creative with our leftovers throughout the year, when it comes to Christmas, we can tend to be a little more wasteful.
Implement eco-friendly Christmas controlled catering which involves you planning more effectively and buying less.
Buy local fresh foods whenever possible as the further food travels, the greater the cost, the food wastage and the carbon footprint.
Store all fresh foods and leftovers properly in appropriate containers to further cut down on waste. Also, make sure to store any leftovers in an area of the fridge where they can be easily seen and consumed before they become inedible and are destined for the bin.
Cook creatively and aim to use up any leftovers first before buying more food.
6. Compost Food Waste
Once you’ve successfully reduced or reused your Christmas food waste to the best of your ability, you can now turn everything you couldn’t use into valuable compost using the Bokashi Bran kitchen waste recycling system. After the festive season, remember to include your fruit skin Christmas tree decorations that have done their due diligence in your recycling.
Bokashi composting doesn’t discriminate. All food waste, whether cooked or uncooked can be very simply turned into nutrient-rich food for your garden in a unique fermentation process that is not only easy on your nose but is kind to the environment too.
Start Reducing Your Waste with Bokashi Bran Today
Visit our website to find out more about how you can recycle your food waste to compost to help you make this a truly eco-friendly Christmas and put you in good stead to make your home a cleaner and greener environment in the future. Contact us today with any questions regarding our products.
Now Read: 4 Easy Ways to Help Save The Environment
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