Go Greener, Australia

Ok, I said I wasn’t going to post until after the New Year, but I wanted to report back on how greening my Christmas went.

• I didn’t have many decorations, but am working on some homemade ones for next year.
• I managed to make all my gift wrappings green: mostly I re-used gift bags, paper and ribbon, and bought a small amount of wrapping made from recycled paper.
• I completely forgot to write Christmas cards, but no-one noticed
• I bought some fairly good gifts: Sigg bottles and organic toys for the kids; a wind-up LED torch for my dad; a pashmina for my mum (not particularly environmental, but long-lasting and multi-purpose); and a plant for a good friend.

I hosted a Christmas lunch for my whole family, and was very happy with the results. Everyone have a good time, and the meal was also pretty eco-friendly. We had local ham and free-range chicken, a salad made mostly from local and organic vegetables (plus some tinned lentils), home-made icecream and sorbet using mostly local ingredients, and a fruit salad that wasn’t entirely local, but was at least fully Australian. By preparing a lot of the food ahead of time, we were very relaxed and got to spend time with our family rather than in the kitchen. We used real cutlery, napkins and compostable plates rather than plastic throw-aways. And we had ice in buckets and eskies rather than loading up a second fridge for drinks.

Now we’ve got the clean-up to deal with: leftover food and wrapping paper!

Leftovers can be a huge source of waste over Christmas - people want to feed everyone, but not everyone is hungry in such hot weather! So a lot of food gets thrown out, which is not only a waste of resources, but also adds to landfill. We managed to compost most of our food scraps, although some helpful guests cleared their own plates before we could let them know about the compost. And I’ll definitely be looking for ideas on how to store and use leftovers: the UK site Love Food, Hate Waste has some great tips and recipes.

I managed to salvage some wrapping paper and some pretty ribbons to be re-used during the year. I targeted people who open their presents carefully, rather than those who tear it off with gleeful abandon the way I do! I’ll have to learn to do better with my own wrappings next time. The rest of the paper went into the compost and the recycling bin - I encouraged people to leave their trash with me rather than politely take it home, since I know I’ll dispose of it responsibly

How did you go with your Christmas? If you managed to do things greener than you normally would, or had any problems making greener choices, let me know in the comments.

Thanks to all my readers this year - I hope you all have a merry Christmas, with lots of time with the people you care about, and not too much stress.

I’m taking this week off from posting, but will be back after that with my New Year’s Green Resolutions and much more.

Today we’re looking at ways you can green your Christmas meals with your family and friends. Food is an area where we can make a big difference with our choices, and I think it’s pretty easy compared to greening your gifts or decorations.

When it comes to feeding your family and friends, you can use the same guidelines that you would to make your own meals more eco-friendly. I’ve written about these 6 ways to choose eco-friendly food before in detail, but the basics are:

• choose local, organic and fair-trade food that’s in season for where you live
• avoid overly-packaged or over-processed food
• try to make your own if possible

When you’re shopping for your Christmas meal, choose food that meets as many of those guidelines as possible. You could also try serving your guests organic wine, local beer from micro-breweries, fair-trade teas and coffees and chocolates.

Luckily, most Aussies have ditched the full roast meal in favour of BBQs, seafood and more relaxed options. This is better for the environment because you’re not running a hot oven for hours at a time. And it’s nicer for you to be able to spend time with your guests instead of being stuck in the kitchen. On the other hand, Aussies can waste a fair bit of energy by giving our fridges a workout - a hot Christmas day can be a very thirsty way to socialise! Ask your guests to bring eskies with ice to keep their drinks cold, instead of overloading your fridge or running a second one.

Another way to reduce your environmental impact is to use your own dishes instead of plastic, disposable plates. However, if you’ve got a lot of guests (or are on strict water restrictions!), this can just lead to a lot of stress as you wash a mountain of dishes. If that’s the case, then give biodegradable plates and cutlery a go: a few eco-shops like Todae and Biome are stocking them now. They break down much faster in landfill, or you can put them in your compost bin. This year I’ll be feeding Christmas lunch to 10 adults and 6 children, so I’m going to try the biodegradable plates - I’ll let you know how they work out

This is the last of my series on making your Christmas more eco-friendly. Previous articles were on coming up with a plan, decorations, cards and wrappings, choosing gifts,
and gift ideas. I hope you’ve enjoyed it and it’s been useful - if you’ve got any tips or advice to share, please feel free to leave a comment, or ask a question.

Last time I went through some ways you can choose greener Christmas gifts. Today I’m listing my favourite green gifts! All of these products are things I’ve either given, received, would like to give or would like to receive myself.

I’m a bibliophile, so my favourite place to do Christmas shopping is in a bookstore. Kids love Graeme Base’s books (remember Animalia?). He’s written a couple with environmental messages: Uno’s Garden is a story, a maths puzzle and shows us how we change our environments (and how there’s always time to fix our mistakes!); The Waterhole is a counting book with a story about sharing our common resources. Younger kids like the beautiful pictures by Base, and as they get older they enjoy the secret puzzles hidden inside.

For adults who want to read about how to live sustainably, I recommend Greeniology by Tania Ha. I was going to write a review of it, but I’ve lent it out to people who are enjoying it too much to return it! It’s a fun and practical guide for the millions of Aussies living in our cities who want to reduce their environmental impact.

Getting away from the bookshops and into the great outdoors a little… when my nephews and nieces are a little older, I’m going to adopt an endangered animal for them at Perth Zoo. Other ideas include buying paw prints and going on behind-the-scenes tours, with profits going to help the zoos rescue endangered species in our region. But for now I’ll be getting my nieces some Anamalz instead.

While we’re still outside, you can try a fair-trade football; Sigg re-useable water bottles; or a wind-up torch and emergency phone charger .

Around the home I like the Ripple gift pack (the one with the duckie that’s a shower-timer!); Stuffit reuseable bags in a 3 pack; or Candelas for energy-efficient mood lighting (we received these as a wedding gift and love them!)

In the kitchen, I’m a big fan of seasonal cooking. A book of recipes organised by ingredient or season rather than by meal plan can be a winner - it makes it easier to find something to do with that unusual vegetable you picked up at the markets. I like Stephanie Alexander’s The Cooks’ Companion (another wedding present), but there’s plenty of them out there.

And you can’t go too far wrong with food. There’s a huge range of organic, fair-trade and sustainable chocolates, coffee, tea, wine, olive oil, native jams and spices and so on - a quick trip around your local supermarket will find you some, and most eco-shops have a great range.

Finally, if you’re short on time but want to make sure you give a nice gift, have a look at Biome’s hampers. I won one earlier in the year, and was really impressed with it! They’ve got a huge range, with food, pampering and kids versions, and will deliver around Australia.

Gift-giving has the potential to be the most eco-unfriendly part of Christmas - there’s the driving to and from the shops, the pressure to buy quantity instead of quality, the potential to choose the wrong gift if you’re in a rush or buying for people you don’t know well, which leads to wasted resources as those gifts end up gathering dust or thrown out.

But thinking green not only reduces the environmental impact of your gifts, it can also make the whole process a lot easier on everyone. You can go green by choosing gifts with various environmentally-friendly labels on them, but it’s not the only way…

Do’s and Don’ts

• Think before you buy: consider the person you’re giving the gift to, and find out their hobbies, their passions, and general tastes before making a decision about something you’d like to get them. It cuts the time you spend haunting the shops wondering if they’d prefer a singing Santa or a new fairy-floss maker, and it reduces the chance of you buying them an unwanted gift.
• Remember your general green principles: less is more; reduce, reuse, recycle; buy local, sustainable, organic, or all three if you can.
• Don’t buy disposable things, avoid toxic plastics (PVC) and over-packaged products.
• Plan your shopping trip so you can be as efficient as possible. It saves time, causes less car-pollution, and frees up a parking space for someone else on the days you’re sitting at home listening to carols
• Let your fingers do the walking: order gifts over the phone or online, to be delivered to you through the post.
• If you don’t know the person well enough to know what they’d like, don’t buy them a gift! Will they notice if you don’t? If so, consider a gift certificate (not a green tip so much as a time-saving one!).

So how else can you make your gift-giving greener?
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Cards and gift-wrappings are an area where you can make a huge difference to your eco-friendly Christmas. The usual way is to buy rolls of Christmas paper, maybe ribbons and tags as well, to wrap all your gifts in, while sending out dozens of cards to all your friends, family and co-workers. By following the reduce-reuse-recycle mantra, you can really make this part of Christmas a lot greener.

Reduce

Does everyone you know need a card? I don’t send cards to people I’ll be seeing frequently over the period - I’m going to be celebrating with them anyway, they don’t need a card when I can give them a big hug instead. I make an effort to send cards to friends and family living in other cities, but I also try to email or call them too, so we can have a longer exchange than there’s room for in a card.

Do your gifts really need to be wrapped? Some do, obviously, if they’re going to be sitting under a tree before being received, or you’re planning a surprise. But some gifts aren’t improved by wrapping. If it’s a very large gift, try hiding it somewhere and making a short treasure hunt for it instead of swathing it in rolls and rolls of paper. If you’re giving someone a plant, it probably looks best just as nature made it.

Reuse

Ok, so that you don’t think I’m turning into Scrooge here, there’s still a lot of cards and wrapping that you can’t reduce away. So what can you do?

My family is very good at re-using gift bags instead of wrapping paper. We tend to use them for the adults’ gifts, as the kids are more likely to peek to see what they’re getting! We started using them for birthdays, and saved them so that they now appear at Christmas as well. They come in all sizes and shapes, in lots of pretty patterns.

I’ve received gifts wrapped in newspaper, tied with red ribbon and looking great; I’ve also received gifts wrapped in the drawings my little cousins made at kindegarten - this is a great idea for doting relatives of your kids. I’ve also heard of people using large pages from calendars.

Alternatively, you can wrap a present in something that can be re-used in someone’s home, so that it becomes part of the gift: fabric is great for this, in the form of tea-towels, saris, sarongs, etc. Look at the Furoshiki (Japanese wrapping cloth) website for ways to wrap gifts with fabric.

Recycle

I’m not a fan of reusing cards that people have sent you, but you can buy cards made from recycled paper instead. Fund-raising cards from charities and non-profit organisations are more likely to use recycled paper than the bulk-packs of cards from supermarkets, but you never know so it’s best to check the small print on the back of the card. My favourites so far are the cards from the Red Cross I found a few years ago - made from recycled paper, with a recipe for Anzac biscuits on the back!

Re-using wrapping paper is a bit easier, especially if you’re a careful un-wrapper and the gift-giver isn’t too heavy on the sticky-tape. But careful hunting can sometimes find wrapping paper made from recycled materials - however, it’s harder to come by than recycled cards. If you’ve found some recycled card or paper, you can use them to make your own gift tags and avoid the mass-produced ones.

Other ways

Cards and wrapping are also an area where you can easily support fair-trade and community groups - Oxfam has a wide range (the surfing Santa above is just one example) and eco-friendly shops like Biome will also be able to help you out there.

And finally - tell your family and friends you don’t expect lots of cards or fancy wrappings on the gifts they give to you. Perhaps they’ve been wanting to cut back, but didn’t want to offend you by looking like they don’t care. Or maybe they’ve never thought about it before, but would be a bit relieved to have one item off their to-do list. Try telling the busiest person you know first, and give them some ideas from this article. If they get behind you, you’re more likely to convince other people in your group.

I like Christmas decorations: they make me smile, and get me in the mood for the silly season. But they’re not always the most eco-friendly things, so here’s some suggestions for ways to lower their impact.

Trees

Generally, you’re looking for either real trees, or something you plan to use for a long time so that you avoid waste.

• My grandmother used to decorate a eucalyptus branch each year! Pinus radiata is the species grown here that looks the closest to a traditional Christmas tree, and is generally grown on plantations, but can be a weed problem.
• If you’re buying a real tree, ask the seller how they’re grown (plantation? cut out of a forest? sprayed with chemicals?) before you make your final decision.
• Real trees need daily watering to keep them looking fresh, so take water-use into account if you buy one.
• I bought my plastic tree before I became interested in the environment, so it’s a good thing I like it, because I’ll be re-using it for many years to come. If you’re getting rid of an old plastic tree, don’t throw it out, make sure it gets re-used by donating it to somewhere that could do with some good cheer.
• Some alternatives: decorate a tree in your front yard; make a tree as a craft project (only for the ambitious!).

Lights

Christmas lights can be energy-hogs, but they don’t have to be.

• Re-using the lights you’ve already got is ok, but if you’re in the market for new ones, buy LED lights - they use far less electricity than normal ones.
• I haven’t been able to find solar-powered Christmas lights in Australia, but if you see any please let me know!
• Make sure you don’t run your lights all night - turn them off before you go to bed, or use a timer if you’re forgetful.
• Switch to Green Power so the electricity is coming from a renewable resource, or at least being offset

Decorations

Again, you’re looking for decorations that will last, rather than flimsy disposables. Bonus points for using recycled materials!

• I prefer a modern streamlined look, so I bought a set of red and silver ornaments in a classic style so I can re-use them every year.
• My mother-in-law has a set of lovely Christmas tree decorations she made herself - round cards with the name of every family member, tied on with ribbons. Last year I added to my plain ornaments with some simple cut-out paper shapes: reindeer and doves, although maybe to be truly Aussie about it I should switch the reindeer for kangaroos DIY ornaments are great because you know there were no sweatshops or dangerous chemicals involved in making them, and they haven’t been transported all around the world to get to you.
• I’m still looking for a decent star to sit on top of our tree, as I prefer them to angels, but take a look at these Angels with Attitude from Biome. They’re a community-aid project that re-uses materials that’d normally get thrown away.
• This year I’m going to revive an old family tradition of hanging our Christmas cards instead of tinsel around the living area. You can use lengths of string, but I’ve also seen a very nice blank mobile which allowed you to hang whatever you like on it (bonus: can be used to decorate your house at other times of year too).

If you’ve got any ideas for eco-friendly Christmas decorations, please let me know. Next time: yummy Christmas food!

At Christmas everyone enjoys the chance at the end of the year to focus on family and friends and loved ones. We all want to remember what’s important, and think about what we want for the future. We like to show people we care about them by sharing food and gifts together.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to go… but often we spend more money than we should, or eat too much, or just get sick of all the pressure to be festive. The hype and commercialism annoy us, but it’s hard sometimes to figure out how to get away from it.

Step One

I think the first step towards having a merry Christmas is working out what you want to focus on. For me, an ideal Christmas is:

• decorating my house to get me into the mood of the season
• giving thoughtful presents to the people I love
• sharing a meal with my family, and catching up with friends
• doing something for those less fortunate in our world
• getting out into the sun to take advantage of our lovely December weather

Step Two

Work out ways to avoid or reduce the stuff you don’t like about the season. If it doesn’t fit into your ideal Christmas list, don’t waste time, money and environmental resources on it. Sometimes easier said than done, I know But I’ve got some ideas about how you can negotiate your way to a simpler Christmas.

Step Three

Now that you’ve got less to worry about, look at ways of greening the things you do want to do.

Your ideal Christmas is probably different to mine, but the general principles are the same - focus on what’s important, do it really well and according to your values, and figure out ways to skip the rest of the junk. I’ll be writing about the steps I’m taking this year to green my Christmas, and showing some resources that you can use too. Tomorrow I’ll be starting with the decorations, then I’ll follow up later with tips for gifts and shindigs.

A wedding day is about making promises for the future, about what you as a couple think is important - since Dave and I care a lot about the environment, it seemed logical to make our wedding as green as possible when we got hitched last year.

I’ve seen articles about people who had proper environmentally-friendly weddings, with hemp suits, hybrid cars and all-vegan menus. We’d never organised a green party before, and the eco-options here in Perth were limited then. So we decided to green what we could and not fret about the rest. Here’s how we rate according to Treehugger’s Guide to How to Green Your Wedding:

What we did well

• Reduce the size of the guest list: we preferred to just have people we were close to, rather than every relative this side of the Nullabor.
• Choose re-usable: the guys wore their own suits or bought ones they’d be able to wear again; the bridesmaids chose dresses that were more of a cocktail style and two have been worn again already; the decorations (vases, candles and table-runners) were re-used at my cousin’s wedding. I’ve worn my shoes again several times, since they’re pretty and suit several of my other nice dresses.
• Eco-friendly products: we used recycled, fair-trade paper from Paperwise (formerly EcoPaper Shop) for invitations.
• Choose local: we got married at a winery, so the wine was as local as it gets; the menu featured many foods from the South-West, like lamb from Gin-Gin and Mount Barker free-range chicken. It was delicious! Our venue also agreed to serve fair-trade tea and coffee.
• DIY: my bridesmaids and I made bouquets from beads and wire. They were a lovely alternative to flowers grown miles away and transported by cold-storage trucks to Perth.
• Our registry had some green options, and was short because we’re not into over-consumption.
• Communicating our greeniness: one of our readings was from David Suzuki’s book The Sacred Balance.
• Honeymoon: at Forest Rise Eco-Retreat, a 3hr-drive from home (better than flying, but still far away enough to get away from everyday life).

Where we could have done better

• I had plans for DIY green favours, but ran out of time. We ended up with jellybeans in cellophane, which was fun, yummy and cute, but not eco-friendly.
• Our cake used free-range eggs, but if I’d started sooner, I could’ve found someone willing to make this all-organic for me, or done it myself. We went with a local lady who made us a completely delicious cake so it’s hard to be worried about it
• Dave tried hard to find green transport, and came up empty-handed. There’s just not much of it in Perth. We looked at renting a Prius (none available at that time), or renting a hydrogen-powered bus from Transperth (not allowed). Our venue was too far out of the city for public transport, unfortunately.
• My dress wasn’t eco-friendly at all, but it was handmade here in Perth - no sweatshop or importing necessary.
• The rings: we bought our plain rings from a place that doesn’t use conflict diamonds. Perth doesn’t have much in the area of recycled or GreenKarat rings, and antiques aren’t my style.
• Offsets for bridal party travel, or honeymoon travel: we didn’t think of that until too late, and too broke!

If I get married again (just joking, sweetie!), I’d know better what green options to look for, and there are more green products in Perth every day. I’m sure I could have a greener wedding this year than I had last year. The only thing I’d really change is the favours: they’re not essential. I should’ve skipped them altogether and spent the time and money on a good massage instead!

We had a lovely day, surrounded by family and friends who support our eco-friendly attempts and wish us well in our marriage. I’m glad we tried to make the occasion as green as possible - it was one of the many things that made the day special, and reflected our hopes for the future.