Photo by Scott Lidell

Christmas time can be a very wasteful time of year. So how can you try to be a little more eco-friendly without spoiling all the fun this festive season?

1. Buy local food produce for your Christmas dinner

This year try to buy as much of your Christmas dinner ingredients from local farms. If you can purchase a locally bred turkey, locally grown Brussel sprouts and potatoes you’ll be making a big step towards being more eco-friendly this Christmas. And you might find the food tastes better as locally produced food has a lower carbon footprint because it isn’t shipped in from abroad.

2. Go organic this Christmas

Imagine how delicious an organic Christmas dinner would be. Organic food is grown without the use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides that harm the environment. The soil is healthier and the local wildlife benefits from a pesticide free environment. Organic food is healthier because organically grown crops absorb natural nutrients from the organic soil. So this Christmas see if you can go organic for a great tasting, healthier Christmas dinner.

3. Buy eco-friendly gifts for your friends and family

An eco-friendly Christmas gift is a great present. Eco-friendly gifts tend to be interesting and quirky, which is great at Christmas when people want a nice surprise to unwrap. But not only that’ eco-friendly gifts remind your friends about the importance of sustainable living.

4. Go for a walk down to your local pub

This Christmas leave the car at home, wrap up warmly and take a stroll with your family to the local pub for a Christmas drink. A walk after a hefty Christmas dinner is a good way to relieve that bloated feeling.

5. Recycle your wrapping paper

The temptation at Christmas, after opening the presents, can be to just chuck all the ripped up paper in the bin. This Christmas make an effort to remove the adhesive tape and recycle the used wrapping paper. It’s easier than you think and if everyone did it, it could make a big difference.

6. Got a lot of leftovers? Compost them

You’ll probably have a lot of leftover food that can’t be eaten at Christmas time. Did you know that most of it can be composted and used in the garden? With a discreet and self contained kitchen composter you don’t need to leave the kitchen to compost the leftovers you scrape off your dinner plates. It can be kept in the kitchen ready to access with ease.

Will you make an effort to be more eco-friendly this Christmas? Please let us know in the comments.

People living in the UK throw away well over 28 million tonnes per year of rubbish from their homes, the same as three and a half million double decker buses. Unfortunately, only around 27% of this waste is recycled while most of the rest is tipped into landfill sites – better known as rubbish tips, large holes dug into the ground to store it. The rubbish stays in the ground for a long time because it does not decompose easily, and it releases poisonous materials,  greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide and the trash itself can be a hazard to humans and wildlife. The space left for landfill is running out– and more landfill sites will need to be created.

So, we want to encourage you to recycle and reuse as much as you can. At school, buy recycled or sustainable products such as BE books and Tru-Green envelopes, re-use unwanted print-outs as sketch or note paper and then recycle them, Buy equipment in bulk to reduce packaging and deliveries, and set up a recycling scheme for all those lunch time bottles and cans.  We welcome any more ideas you might have to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Wildlife Watch is a great website for kids and grown ups to learn about how to reduce wastage and rubbish by playing games and checking out some great eco facts. Take a look today!

This is possibly the most challenging part of my life. I can’t seem to ever remember to use the reusable shopping bags I buy. So I racked my brains. I ate some pasta, I read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and I completed a degree in microbiology. After a busy week I finally came up with a solution.

So I opened up Photoshop, drew a picture and saved as jpeg. You can now download this wonderful free door handle reminder tool. Print it out, cut it out, stick it to a piece of card for enhanced durability and hang it on your front door handle. Now you’ll never forget your reusable bags again.

Download the ‘Do not forget your bags’ sign

Got a better idea?

Let us know in the comments.

Here’s an idea to help you save paper and printer ink. When you’ve completed an online order you’ll often get a confirmation page displaying your order details. Often the website will say something like:

Print out this page for your records

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Good question. First things first. Don’t throw it in the bin. Here are a few things to consider:

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