Tag: sustainable living

5 Easy Ways to Have a Sustainable Holiday

5 Easy Ways to Have a Sustainable Holiday

Tis’ the season of joyfulness and giving. Along with all the holiday festivities and giving of gifts comes a whole lot of TRASH. I want to share my 5 top tips for enjoying a sustainable holiday season! They are fun and easy, so why not give them a try?

1. Sustainable Gift Giving

This holiday season give your loved ones the gift of an experience. Gifting experiences are creative and eco-friendly! With a little bit of research, you can find something perfect for everyone on your list. They are also great because you can find experiences for all budgets.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

  • Restaurants
  • Spas
  • Theater
  • Escape room
  • Zip lining
  • Wine tasting
  • Museums

experience gift

If you are the type of person that likes to give a physical gift, there are sustainable options! Give a gift that keeps giving.

Some great ideas are:

  • Trees
  • Plants
  • Herb garden
  • Or my favorite-regift gifts, or books, particularly if you are not going to use them anymore anyway.

2. Change Up the Cards

Billions of Christmas cards are sent every year, creating an enormous amount of unnecessary waste. This year rethink sending out cards.

However, if you would like to still send something try one of these ideas:

  • Send plantable cards
  • Send ecards
  • Or my favorite- when I lived in Germany, my family would make new cards out of old ones. You take part of the card you like and simply cut it out and glue it onto another part of a card that wasn’t used. This is super fun and is great to do with kids.

3. Sustainable Gift Wrap

Unfortunately, most gift wrap is not recyclable. Fortunately you can avoid paper altogether with a little creativity.

Next time you are wrapping a gift try using:

  • Reusable cloth wrapping
  • Recyclable wrapping paper
  • Brown paper or newspaper
  • Reusable bags
  • Your child’s artwork they no longer want

4. Use Sustainable Decorations

What is the holiday season without the decorations, right? While they look gorgeous and get the holiday spirit flowing, many of them become waste and wind up in our landfills. There are eco-friendly alternatives.

You’re going to love these:

  • Rent a live Christmas tree.
  • Buy a second-hand fake tree.
  • Revamp your old holiday decorations and turn them into something new.
  • Make your own decoration out of recyclable items or things found in nature.

sustainable tree

5. Celebrate Sustainably

Holiday parties are a must during this time of year. So many of the items used to host a party are made of plastic and many are one-time use. Switch over to items that you can use year after year…this will save money too!

Host your party with these:

  • Glassware
  • Reusable utensils
  • Cloth napkins
  • Cloth table cloth
  • Sustainable decorations (see previous tip)- use outdoor clippings to make wreaths, table decorations, arrangements
  • Organic foods

Go ahead, get creative this year and celebrate the holidays sustainably. Are you ready to take sustainable living further than the holidays? Contact me and I can set you up for success!

10 Sustainable Ways To Improve Your Health

It’s incredibly important to be mindful when on a journey to improve your health. I make it a point daily to think of ways to help our planet, and in turn the future of our children (or the future of those children who will be responsible for taking care of all of us). I decided to compile a list of things I do which might be helpful to incorporate in your daily life.

drinking water

10 ways to keep you, the Planet, and your children healthy:

  1. Buy recycled printer cartridges. Yep that’s right, all those little wasteful capsules are just creating waste. Guess what? You can buy them second hand- they have been fully filled and sealed and look like new.
  2. Use the back of paper for to do lists, calendars, game score tallies, and paper airplane contests. Or staple them together and make a notepad.
  3. Turn the water off in the shower while you are sudsing your hair and body. Really, this actually saves A LOT of water. It also  lowers your water  and electricity bill. And more importantly it teaches children a valuable lesson about the importance of water.
  4. Reuse glass jars to store things. All snacks, dry goods, and nuts go in jars in my cabinets. Not only are less chemicals leaking into your food, you are recycling the glass all on your own. I also drink from jars, use them as vases, crayon holders, cookie jars, you name it.
  5. Don’t wash your jeans. Yep I mean it, ask anyone in the denim industry and they will tell you, do not wash your jeans! They last longer, look and feel better unwashed. If they smell, put them in the freezer- a tip from Rag & Bone.
  6. Make your own nut milk- it is so easy, so cheap, and so delicious. You also know your ingredients. And, the left over nut pulp can be used to make cookies, or spread them on a pan, put it in the oven, and then grind for flour to pan fry chicken, fish, or veggies.
  7. Use a half cup of vinegar for smells in the washer. Don’t buy synthetic fragrance that causes cancer, hormone dysfunctions, mood swings, and migraines to name a few- just add the vinegar and see how the smells are neutralized.
  8. Use salt and peroxide for blood or wine stains instead of bleach. Bleach is highly toxic, particularly for marine life. It can cause blindness, and yet we still pour it down our drains, going into our water sources.
  9. Use a few drops of lavender oil and water in a spray bottle to clean your yoga mat. If you are a germaphobe, just use a drop of tea-tree oil as it is a natural disinfectant.
  10. Old newspaper cleans windows and mirrors better than anything. Simply use vinegar and water to clean windows. If you don’t like the smell of vinegar, use any essential oil in the mix.

Eliminating waste and toxins out of our environment is a collective win/win as everything ends up in our drinking water. Would you like to know more about sustainable living? Connect with me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, or you can connect with me here!